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Spilling the Beans: How the Transatlantic Slave Trade Made Coffee Shops White


a photo of Renata Henderson is co-owner of Cxffee Black
Renata Henderson is co-owner of Cxffee Black and the Anti Gentrification Coffee Club in Memphis, Tenn. She and her husband, co-owner Batholomew Jones, are working to disrupt the coffee industry like few people of color have.

Two posters hang on my kitchen wall. One reads “LOVE BLACK PEOPLE LIKE YOU LOVE BLACK CXFFEE”; the other, “BREW. PLOT. PLAN. STRATEGIZE. ORGANIZE. MOBILIZE. REPEAT.” A dear friend saw the posters when she visited the Anti Gentrification Cxffee Club and knew I had to have them. The posters begged me to seek out the shop itself, so I did.

 

I didn’t know what I expected when I pulled up, but it wasn’t just a house nestled between Memphis’ Berclair and Midtown neighborhoods. “Welcome home,” I heard someone say, as I entered the door of what had likely once been a residence before it was converted to a business. Visitors of varying ethnicities waiting patiently while some rapper I didn’t recognize rapped his heart out through the speakers. Posters and framed pictures cover the walls. Some walls showcase merch. Large burlap bags of fragrant coffee were stacked roughly four feet high near in the back left right-hand corner. To the left of that was an alcove, the baristas domain. Everyone in the space seemed warm, happy. It was comforting. And a little weird in the best ways possible.

 


A look inside Cxffee Black in Memphis, Tenn.

A customer talks to the barista inside cxffeeblack coffee shop
A customer talks to the barista at Cxffee Black

After the barista made my drink (“the D’Angelo”, a brown sugar latte), he surprised me with the announcement that the first cup of coffee for guests was free. As he handed me the cup, he offered an Ethiopian blessing that translates to, “May your house lack neither coffee nor peace.” Yeah, this place is different.



Anti Gentrification Cxffee Club is owned by Bartholomew “Bart” Jones and his business partner and wife Renata Henderson. The shop exclusively serves beans they roast from their own “Cxffee Black” supply line. Their journey through the coffee industry, like that of any non-white person, has obstacles of historical and systemic racism and its ramifications.

 

Depending on the source, there are between 1,500 and 3,000 coffee roasters in the U.S. Of those, 12% are Black, 27% are other people of color, and 56.5% are white (the remaining demographic is unknown). The male-dominated industry (75%) also sees women earning $0.84 to every dollar earned by men. This, like many instances where we see an imbalance of representation and diversity, is the result of something nefarious.

 

The U.S. coffee industry has grown into a $110 billion market, outpacing even the five major sports leagues, combined, by nearly double digits between 2022 and 2023. Most of that revenue—by a lot—is thanks to African and Caribbean nations.

 

Stay Woke 

Light research suggests coffee was discovered by a goat herder. It goes something like this:

 

Khalid (or Kaldi), an Ethiopian goat herder, noticed his herd of goats seemed to be more energetic and precocious when they ate berries from a tree in the area he shepherded. Khalid tried them himself and found he, too, had more energy than typical. Curious and delighted by his discovery, he shared his theory about the “magic” of the berries with local monks. Some say the monks saw it is an answer to their prayers, as the berries would allow them to avoid drowsiness during prayer times. And others say the monks rejected the beans by throwing them into a fire. Khalid, taken by the smell of the roasted berries, scooped some of the ashes into a cup of water and had the first cup of coffee. News of this new drink spread.

 

Jones says deeper research offers a more spiritual take.

 

“People have done experiments where they put goats around coffee and the goats won't even touch the coffee cherries. … But from what we've learned with the indigenous communities, is that it's centered around peace and a spiritual belief. So the Oromo people—who are the ethnic group who we primarily source our coffee from, in Ethiopia—believe that coffee is a gift from God to establish peace.”

 

He goes on to suggest the discovery of coffee dates back to 850 BC. Ethiopian suppliers with whom Jones works claim when man disobeyed God, man died, and God wept. From the place where man was buried grew the first coffee plant, an offering from God to reestablish peace between humans and God and humans and the land.

 

We’ll never know exactly how a piping hot cup of black coffee got from goats to grieving gods, but we know we wouldn’t have arrived there without Ethiopian berries. Even today, the widest variety of coffee beans is found on the African continent.

 

The drink initially spread through theft. Henderson, the other half of the Memphis-based coffee team says, “[C]offee was stolen from Ethiopia, 1616, three years before black bodies were stolen from the same continent. … [W]e hadn't made our way across the seas yet. So they gave it to everybody else who were like, ‘Ooh, look something we discovered.,’ … giv[ing] it out as gifts to people in Spain and France, etc.”

 

By the 15th century, coffee was grown in Arabia and in Egypt and Persia by the 16th century. People drank it not only in homes but also in coffee houses or Schools of the Wise, where patrons slurped drink between conversation, board games and sharing news amid musical performances and entertainment. This is a formula that obviously persists to this day. Then and now, coffee houses serve as attractive centers for the exchange of information, hence the “Schools of the Wise” label. With the bean catching on at the height of global colonization it’s no surprise it got swept up in exploitation as another prize for the potentate. Simultaneously, Europeans invaded African countries, and demand for coffee increased.

Coffee beans, sometimes referred to as cherries, grow on trees and require nimble fingers to harvest.

Coffee is King

Cotton is widely recognized as one of the chief goods enslaved Africans harvested at the height of slavery. But coffee played a significant role in the transatlantic slave trade and was key to the development of colonial economies in the Americas, particularly in warmer zones where coffee plants could grow. As European powers expanded their empires in the 17th and 18th centuries, they established large plantations in their colonies to produce cash crops for export to Europe. Coffee was one of those vital crops, alongside sugar, cotton, and tobacco. Cultivating coffee (then and now) required a large amount of labor that slavery could deliver with exploited Africans.

 

Colonizers established vast coffee plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean, and parts of Central America, where coffee production became integral to the new economy. Enslaved people on coffee plantations endured brutal conditions similar to the cotton fields where their separated family members and friends were sold. They were forced to clear land, plant, harvest, and process beans under the grueling, soggy heat of tropical grow zones, often working sunup to sundown. The work was physically demanding, and treatment dehumanizing. Slavers subjected workers to harsh punishments, poor living conditions, minimal food. Men and women alike died from exhaustion, malnutrition, and disease.

 

Colonizers generated massive wealth from the unpaid labor. The earnings, like those of other plantation crops, helped finance European industrialization and the global economy while denying the enslaved Africans who produced the wealth any share in it. As demand increased, so did forced labor to produce more supply.

 

Today the work of coffee production is just as labor intensive, only now it comes with baggage.

 

“In places like Rwanda,” Henderson says, “they're just now returning to coffee farms, because coffee was seen as—they were forced to pick coffee when they were colonized. And they see it basically the same way, as if somebody were to ask us, would we ever go back and pick cotton.”

 

Henderson adds exploitation, coupled with the annihilation of both people and history, can create an emotional distance from coffee and coffee production. The resulting alienation can make even historic originators complete strangers to a whole trade—as colonization is wont to do.

 

“Because of the way it started, of course, is how it’s perpetuated,” Henderson says. A flagrant example of this lingers today in the industry’s lopsided revenue.  

Globally, the coffee industry’s revenue is more than quadruple that of U.S. GNP, maxing out at about $460 billion in 2022, according to the National Coffee Association. Jones says Black people across the diaspora represent a mere 1% of the global share.


Coffee isn't just for drinking. Nigerian artist Olude Peter uses the warm tans and browns of coffee pigment as a medium for his art. This piece is "Joy Dreams."

In the Black | Interrupting a System

You can continue doing things the way they’ve always been, or you can try something new. Henderson and Jones chose the latter; in this instance through direct trade. Coffee roasters—no matter how large or small—typically use intermediaries who coordinate with wholesalers and retailers and broker a deal that earns a good profit for the client and, of course, himself. Not so at Cxffee Black, which has involved itself in the import business to get what it needs.

 

“We’re buying directly from people [in African countries]. We say, ‘what’s your cost?’ And that’s unheard of because people are like, ‘You don’t get to do that,’” Henderson says.

 

Removing the middleman is not normal coffee business practice. Henderson and Jones see as an upset to the status quo. While the price of wholesale coffee has increased over time, it hasn’t changed a great deal since the 1800s. Yes, the 1800s. Adjusted for inflation, in the late 18th century, green coffee was about $3.14 per pound. Wars and revolutionary revolts spiked the price to $22 per pound, at its highest in 1809, but the commodification of African people and their labor brought those prices back down by 1826 where we find Brazil imported coffee sold at $4.26 per pound. Since that time, the price has fluctuated between $3 to $5 with a few notable spikes and dips. The price of a cup of coffee in the U.S., however, has grown astronomically, partially due to global warming and the El Nino affect in Vietnam.


The exploitive legacy of coffee is still reflected in the modern treatment of exploited African and Latin American coffee farmers, many of whom are descendants of historically manipulated and enslaved people. Coffee farmers typically earn up to 10% of their harvests’ retail price. Systems of oppression breed cycles of harm. Child labor is one example ubiquitous to the industry, as is infrequent educational opportunities and generational poverty. A 2022 report produced by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs found 13 countries (all in South America and Africa) use child labor in coffee production. One of the target nations even used forced labor.

 

Multinational corporations like Starbucks and Nestlé, which dominate the industry, reap the benefits of the swindle, bypassing producers who both deserve and need the revenue. Unless you choose to do things differently, things really do stay the same.

 

Jones says for his business, that means inserting himself in the supply chain by including others. “You have to include Black people at every point of the supply chain,” he says. “And we have to be creative about reimagining what this industry could look like where it includes us, instead of excluding us.”

 

Ninety percent of the vendors for Cxffee Black’s distribution operation and its storefront, Anti Gentrification Cxffee Club, are Black. The company roasts its own coffee, trains Black baristas and roasters and they partner directly with indigenous growers and harvesters in Ethiopia and Rwanda.

 

There Goes the Neighborhood

“The only history I have with coffee is with my grandfather,” Henderson says, “And he used to give me coffee when I was like 5. I was 5 years old, drinking Folgers or Community or something. … Before that, my grandfather was a part of the sanitation strike. He was a sanitation worker, so he would take coffee with him every day to work.” Henderson and her husband used to ask themselves “do Black people still drink coffee?” The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is: “Kind of.”

 

In 2019, the National Coffee Association said about 64% of the U.S. population drank at least one cup of coffee per day (stats for 2022 are up to about 73%). Black Americans aren’t major coffee consumers compared to peers. African-American coffee consumption is at the lowest at 54%. Latinos are the highest at 65%, followed by whites at 64% and Asian Americans at 60%.

 

The explanations for Black Americans’ low consumption are varied and occasionally unserious. “Drinking coffee makes you black,” they used to say. It’s unlikely the first mama—and it was definitely a mama—who first said this actually believed it. She was possibly tired of her kids asking for stuff, wanted to discourage sharing, and knew the only thing worse than being annoying was being a shade or two darker in Grandma’s America.

 

The theory Black folks fear caffeinated beverages or connect coffee to health concerns seems unlikely, considering the population is 40% more likely than the general population to reach for an energy drink. Plus, Black and Latino children consume about twice as many sugar-sweetened beverages with tons of caffeine as their peers, even if statistics are trending downward. These same drinks are much more addictive and can cause more negative health implications than a simple, daily cup of joe. The truth of the matter is more likely that companies just don’t market to the demographic. There are, however, endless marketing dollars targeted toward more unhealthy options. “Since [coffee] was marketed as something that's sophisticated and high class [when it began to spread], white people assumed that they were supposed to be a part of it, and Black people were told that they were not,” Henderson says.

 

Similar tactics were common in Jim Crow Mississippi, where white store owners would sometimes refuse to sell Coca-Cola products to Black customers and instead sold them RC products.

 

The NCA says there has been an increase of Black coffee drinkers in the last decade thanks in part to Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s Starbucks partnership back in 2010, which opened 125 stores in 12 years. But we still just don’t drink a lot, compared to others. Some of that may be because coffee shops are very … white.

 


Coffee chains are usually one of the cultural four horsemen of gentrification—Whole Foods, svelte white women exercising at night, and designer pet shops, the other three. The atmosphere of a typical coffee shop can be countercultural to the ways Black people are accustomed to gathering. This isn’t an accident. There is a formula, if you’ve noticed: Coffee shop walls are typically white and bare. Beyond a lo-fi soundtrack humming ambient sounds in the background, the air inside is quiet. Whispers and patrons’ fingertips tapping on keyboards accompany the reverberating stillness, occasionally punctuated by a barista’s piercing call of “caramel macchiato with a double shot!” This atmosphere isn’t coincidental. The Specialty Coffee Association strongly advises it specifically, so your soy iced latte stays the main protagonist of your whole experience. The Anti Gentrification Cxffee Club does things differently, hence the name.

 

“Most coffee shops are marketed to a certain population, so you're only going to get a certain type of person to come in. … But because we're (now) in … this socioeconomically diverse, culturally diverse, racially diverse [space], you don't know what kind of family you’re gonna run into,” Henderson says.

 

Henderson and Jones didn’t initially intend to open a brick-and-mortar business, but what they’d seen in other coffee shops demanded a new take. They were determined what they had seen did not have to be what they’d create.

 

 “Going into (traditional) coffee shops is just so … very uncomfortable [for me]. It's just like, you know, you kind of have to conform. The chairs, literally, aren't made for you. The music isn't made for you. The menu don't be hittin’.” (Note: This writer doesn’t eat chicken salad, but apparently Anti Gentrification’ is hittin’.)

 

It’s difficult to imagine 16th century Ethiopian and Persian Schools of the Wise weren’t filled with heated debates about spirituality, philosophy, trade, and jocund spats about whose wife made the best chicken salad. We are a boisterous, multi-tasking people who can enjoy a magnificent cup of coffee surrounded by a great soundtrack and raucous laughter. Like the Schools of the Wise, our creativity allows us to envision the modern-day coffee ceremonies of Ethiopia. Anti Gentrification Cxffee Club wants to be the living room where people go to feel at home, where those looking for seats on city council go to consort with potential constituents, and budding artisans learn to make candles. This Coffee Club, unlike others, resists gentrification and cultural sanitization.

 

“Anti-gentrification,” says Henderson, is gentrification’s countermovement.

 

“What we are going to do is restore dignity back to Black people, and restore comfort in being who you are,” Henderson says.

 

The next time you’re making your pour over, popping a pod in your Keurig, or trying to decide two cubes of sugar or three, remember that cup has a centuries-long history frothed with the deep complications of slavery, colonization and exploit. And if you’re in Memphis and you ever make your way to Anti Gentrification Cxffee Club, don’t worry about asking what milk alternatives they have. They only use oat milk because they already know you likely have a lactose sensitivity.

 


 

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