Tag: Women in Business

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Estelle Axton

WOMEN OF ACHIEVEMENT
2019

HERITAGE
for a woman whose achievements still enrich our lives:

Estelle Axton

Estelle Axton co-founded Stax Records with her brother, James Stewart. The name Stax itself is a combination of STewart and AXton. Stax became renowned as a leader in soul music, rivaling Detroit and the Motown sound in the 1960’s.

Born in Middleton, TN, Estelle began her career as a schoolteacher in Memphis, married Everett Axton, raised their two children at home for ten years, then worked as a teller in a bank.

When her brother needed money to develop a record company, she persuaded her husband they should remortgage their house and joined her brother as a full partner at the newly named Stax Records in 1959. Together they bought the old Capital Theater in an African-American neighborhood now known as Soulsville, and turned it into a recording studio and a record shop. Her brother ran the recording studio and she ran the Satellite Record Shop, which attracted local talent and provided money in sparse recording times.

“The shop was a workshop for Stax Records,” she explained. “When a record would hit on another label, we would discuss what made it sell.” Musicians recalled Estelle as the one who encouraged them and sometimes made her brother sign them up.

Together with her brother she was involved in finding and promoting the careers of artists such as Rufus and Carla Thomas, Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Booker T & the MGs, and Isaac Hayes, who said of her:
“Estelle was a very generous woman. She was generous with her time, with her counsel, with her advice. I think she was responsible for the racial harmony at Stax. Mrs. Axton, you didn’t feel any back-off from her, no differentiation that you were black and she was white. . . Being in a town where that attitude was plentiful, she just made you feel secure. She was like a mother to us all.”
The musicians and singers at Stax called her “Lady A.”

“Were it not for her, there’s no way Stax could have become what it became,” said David Porter, a songwriting powerhouse who wrote many Stax hits, such as Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man,” and “Hold On, I’m Coming.” “She had a positive spirit toward the acts in that community and any young kids who came in there with aspirations. There’s no way that Stax could have become Stax without the positive energy that this lady contributed,” he said.

After leaving Stax Records in 1970, she founded the Memphis Songwriters Association and co-founded the Memphis Music Association, which became the umbrella organization for all Memphis music.

The Stax Museum of American Soul Music opened in 2003, and she lived to see it, dying in 2004 at age 85. In 2007 she herself was posthumously awarded a Grammys Trustee Award, given to “individuals who, during their careers in music, have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording.”

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Carolyn Chism Hardy

Women of Achievement
2012

DETERMINATION
for a woman who solved a glaring problem despite
widespread inertia, apathy or ignorance around her:

Carolyn Chism Hardy

Even before she decided to rescue one of Memphis’s iconic employers, Carolyn Hardy had accomplished a stellar corporate career. She’s been called “a hero to Memphians of both genders.”

The seventh of 16 children, she learned to be smart with money as a little girl, 5 years old, going shopping for her mom in Orange Mound. She made a game out of getting the most, the bets deals for her money.

A confessed introvert and bookworm, Carolyn rarely spoke in class at Melrose High and concentrated on her studies. She read her way through a neighbor’s home library, especially loving the books about places she wanted to see. She graduated a year early and applied to Memphis State. Her family pulled money together to help pay tuition, Carolyn lived at home and served food to patients at Baptist Hospital from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. six days a week.

She was briefly attracted to the study of law – but review of pay scales showed that didn’t make sense. She majored in accounting and graduated at age 20!

Her family has a heritage of entrepreneurship from beauty shops to plumbing companies to grocery stores – 25 major businesses locally and across the country over several generations. Among the best known is Chism Trail supermarkets.

Carolyn started in jams and jellies. She graduated and immediately went to work at the J. M. Smucker Co., managing finance, quality and human resources. She quickly proved to be a natural efficiency expert – quiet, observant and ready to look again and again and to calculate the numbers.

During this time she earned her MBA from Memphis State. Starting in 1994, for five years she led the facility as the first African American female plant manager – a first for any major jam and jelly company. At Smucker’s, her facility boasted the lowest cost, highest quality and great employee satisfaction. In 1999, she became vice president of services, responsible for national software implementations, for Honeywell-POMS Corporation.
In 2001, she made brewing industry history when she joined Coors Brewing Company as its first female general manager/vice president.

When Molson-Coors decided to close the Memphis plant in Hickory Hill in 2005, Carolyn Hardy and a silent partner bought it for $9 million – preserving more than 200 jobs. It was far from easy – the big banks weren’t used to women and minorities borrowing that kind of money, even with her considerable assets. She was directed to contact “hard money lenders” who charge a high interest rate for providing investment funds.

“It was the hardest time in my life,” Carolyn has said. “I was trying to keep jobs in Memphis. The stress of starting a business is tremendous, more than even I expected. . . There were many people who were convinced that I could not pull this off.”

But she was determined. She had watched manufacturing in Memphis go away, leaving warehouse jobs with less pay, no benefits, no health care and no 401k plans. “Somebody’s got to do something,” she said. “I wanted to keep the facility here and use my skills to grow a business that women and minorities could be proud of.”

Carolyn became the first African American female in the nation to own a major brewery. Hardy Bottling Company had the capacity to manufacture more than 100 million cases of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages annually. The company began bottling for a couple of clients and worked their way to “a profitable position.”

Then came the tornado.

That evening in February 2008 she was in a meeting at the plant. As darkness descended around 5 p.m. she moved people into her hallway where she could hear her team pounding on a door urging her to get downstairs. As they got to their storm shelter, the funnel hit – taking off the roof and hitting grain silos, but no one was killed.

Faced with $50 million in damages – far higher than insurance limits – Carolyn was advised to cut her losses and relocate.

But she was determined to fight for the jobs of her employees. She rebuilt, persevering past a shifty contractor who liked to call her “little lady” to one who was able to get the facility up and running within 90 days. She kept it going for 115 employees, doing contract packaging for non-alcoholic drinks. She looked for ways to restart it as a brewery – and Carolyn doesn’t even drink beer!

For months she talked with a major beer company – who also called her “little lady” and yelled at her to sign. She refused.

In late January 2011, she visited Wisconsin to talk with City Brewing. She told them how she had been disrespected and that she could not sell her company to anyone who did not respect women and minorities. She negotiated with City Brewing and in May, Carolyn Hardy sold her property, plant and equipment to City Brewing of Memphis for $30 million.

The deal at the plant, now called Blues City Brewing, will create more than 500 jobs by 2016. Carolyn stayed on board as a consultant for a year – until next month. She pitched into press state senators to rewrite an anti-liquor bill to protect the 500 jobs. And she strategized with our mayors, senators and Southwest Community College for a new training program to prepare local workers for manufacturing jobs.

Carolyn continues to run Chism Hardy Enterprises focusing on commercial real estate development and leasing for intermodal business, following the expansion of railroads.

With eight other executive women, Carolyn is a founding member of Philanthropic Black Women whose mission is to support women and girls’ programs targeted at self-sufficiency.

But her proudest work, she says, is the impact her Chism Hardy Company has had on many lives – her three children, her employees. Carolyn Hardy was determination to preserve manufacturing jobs in her native city. Women of Achievement salutes her for the strength, resolve and plain hard work that she has given to our community.

 

The Boy Scouts of America, Chickasaw Council, honored Carolyn Hardy with the 2019 Distinguished Citizen of the Year Award. She became the first African American and woman to receive that coveted award.

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Tina L. Birchett

Women of Achievement
1999

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Tina L. Birchett

With an entrepreneurial spirit and a commitment to promote diversity in marketing, Tina Birchett launched her own consulting firm in 1994. Now president of Birchett & Associates, Tina has more than 14 years of experience in advertising, marketing, research and promotions.

Tina, a native of Memphis, earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Memphis State University in 1982. She worked in marketing and advertising for WLMT, WDIA, WHRK and Holiday Inn Hotels and Resorts.

Since 1994, she has overcome many obstacles and has set the pace for empowering women in Memphis. As a result of her desire to uplift, enlighten and inform women of color, she produces the Annual Sisterhood Outreach Summit and Showcase, which attracts more than 25,000 women across the Mid-South. This yearly event, which hosts internationally known speakers, promotes unity among women, replenishes their spirituality, and enhances leadership and career development and much more.

As an extension of her commitment to empower women, she is also the founder and publisher of a quarterly magazine, Grace. This magazine’s mission is to be a positive voice for Memphis women of color and to build empowerment through knowledge.

She has been honored among Prominent Black Women by Epsilon Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Outstanding Community Service by Beta Epsilon Omega Chapter of AKA and Life Changing Award from Grace Missionary Baptist Church. She is also a 1999 class member of Leadership Memphis.

Tina Birchett is a tireless advocate of women entrepreneurs.

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Elaine Lee Turner and Joan Lee Nelson

Joan Lee-Nelson
Elaine Lee-Turner
Women of Achievement
1990

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Elaine Lee Turner and Joan Lee Nelson

Late one night in 1983, Elaine Lee Turner and Joan Lee-Nelson sat up discussing the fact that African-American children in Memphis did not know their own history. For these two women, who were intensely aware of their own family’s trail five generations from the slave ship, that problem demanded a solution. They decided they could show children their roots. Within a matter of months, Heritage Tours was a reality.

First they took their idea to various local funding sources, all of which turned them down. Not to be defeated, the women invested their own savings. Joan resigned her position as a job counselor with the City of Memphis; Elaine, a former teacher, reentered the professional world. With a little money and a lot of energy, the two women started the first African-American-owned tour company in the state. Their mission: to discover, chronicle and share the past of the Mid-South’s African-American community.

The sisters grew up in North Memphis hearing their mother, the family historian, tell of her father who was a boy when the slaves were freed. In 1965, Jet magazine named the 14-member Lee clan “the most arrested civil rights family in America.” “We participated because our heritage had been instilled in us,” Elaine said. Said Joan, “We are letting young people know what had to be done to get them where they are now.”

Taking the initiative is not new to these sisters. Elaine and Joan took the lead in organizing the Ida B. Wells Society and helped rally national recognition of Wells’ struggle for racial justice. Their work has won them awards, including the Shelby County Historical Commission’s Robert R. Church Award in 1989 for outstanding contribution in researching and presenting black historical heritage to national and international travelers. Indeed, much of their work involves collecting information through original research that otherwise would have been lost. Their interviews have turned up so much information that they plan a book.

“You have nothing to hold onto without your history,” said Joan, explaining the initiative they took. “You don’t know who you are. You don’t know where you are. You can’t envision the future … We see children’s eyes light up, knowing, ‘I’ve got a future.’”

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Sarah Clayborne

Women of Achievement
1994

HEROISM
for a woman whose heroic spirit was tested and
shown as a model to all in Shelby County and beyond:

Sarah Clayborne

Sarah Clayborne may be the 1990s quintessential mom and apple pie woman. Known as “The Pie Lady” in Memphis, hers is a story of personal commitment and initiative that has caught the hearts of the readers of People magazine, actor Tom Cruise, talk show audiences and just about everybody who knows her story of struggle.

“Sometimes I wonder what all this attention’s about,” she said. “All I did was try to make a living for myself and my daughter and grandbabies.”

Sarah, 44, is a cook who has worked for several well-known restaurants in the city. She no doubt would have continued working in relative obscurity had it not been for a robber’s bullet which struck her daughter in the head in 1987, leaving her paralyzed and helpless. Eugenia Binkins was 18 at the time, had one young son and was six weeks pregnant. She spent her entire pregnancy in a coma, later giving birth to Ahab, who now is five.

To raise money to meet the family’s mounting medical and living expenses, Sarah began baking pies on the side. In 1989, when she lost her job as head chef at a restaurant and nightclub in a dispute over work hours, Sarah decided to launch a full-time business making the pies she learned to bake as an eight-year-old child at her grandmother’s side. Early success led her to open a restaurant in an old house in a rundown South Memphis neighborhood, not far from the Mississippi River. Although she was gaining a steady reputation as “The Pie Lady,” these weren’t easy times. Her home had burned in 1987 and needed repairs. Then her restaurant, including supplies and equipment, burned before she opened the doors for business. She had to make repairs. Then in 1991, her home was burglarized. Even her daughter’s wheelchair was stolen.

Despite the setbacks, she opened her business on Florida Street in January 1991 on little more than a prayer. The menu included soul food and, of course, pies. “I didn’t have any money but I could see my little building and I did have a vision,” she said.

She raised her price on her pies from $10 to $12. A lot of people told her she wouldn’t sell them at that price, that people wouldn’t go to her restaurant in the decrepit neighborhood. Both warnings proved wrong. Sarah’s reputation soared when production crew members filming The Firm learned about her restaurant and began frequenting the place to eat chicken pot pie, smothered chicken and dressing, mixed greens, candied yams and — of course — those pies. Tom Cruise came by one day and ordered a piece of Cherry Royale. He bought a whole pie to go. Director Sydney Pollack one day tasted Sarah’s Glory Hallelujah pie. He left a $100 tip.

Sarah says sometimes she can’t believe how far she has come. She credits her grandmothers and many African-American cooks for her baking talents, and untold numbers of Memphians who have supported her business endeavor. “I couldn’t have kept going,” she says, “without the help of a lot of wonderful people.”

Sarah now employs several people and has a new dream: to use some of her pie proceeds to open a center for indigents.

Clayborne has baked her pies for charities such as Youth Villages’ Soup Sunday and Phineas Newborn Family Foundation. In addition, she has worked for the Center for Independent Living and created the Saveahoe Foundation to provide job training to prostitutes.

Sarah passed away in Jackson, Tennessee, in June 2020.

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Thom Thi Bach

Women of Achievement
1988

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Thom Thi Bach

In 1977 Thom Thi Bach left Vietnam in a boat. She fled her country with 10 children, one of whom was only 12 months old. After four days and nights in a boat, the family landed in Malaysia where they spent seven long months in a refugee camp. At the camp, U.S. Catholic Charities found her and helped her come to the United States in 1978. Her husband could not get out of Vietnam; he died there several years later.

In Saigon she had been a professional egg roll maker, a skill she was taught by her mother. As she searched for a way to support her family in Memphis, she seized upon those homemade Vietnamese egg rolls and proceeded to turn them out in her kitchen.

The Health Department twice declared the egg rolls illegal, however, on technical grounds. Thom Bach, still struggling to comprehend English, sat through hearings on her right to make egg rolls and said to a reporter at one point: “I ask you where you get license for Vietnamese egg rolls, but nobody can tell me.” Finally, Health officials ruled that she could make her egg rolls in any commercial kitchen, but not at home, and she began to make them in local restaurants.

In 1982 she opened the Indochina Care at 2146 Young Street, specializing in Vietnamese food, including the egg rolls. She operates the restaurant with the help of her children — the older ones waiting tables and doing homework between orders, and younger ones playing on the floor behind the counter.

Necessity — to flee Communism and to seek a better future — made her family into “boat people. Initiative — the determination to make a good life — made her a Memphis businesswoman, restaurant owner and, above all else, an independent woman.

Following a fire in 1990, Thom relocated and opened Minh Chau Asian Foods at 1324 Madison. She continues to work to help friends and relatives leave refugee camps to start new lives

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Eunice Carruthers

Women of Achievement
1986

INITIATIVE
for a woman who seized the
opportunity to use her talents and created her own future:

Eunice Carruthers

As one of the 12 children in her family in Arlington, Tennessee, Eunice Carruthers made hats for dolls and decorated her own head with bows, flowers and ribbons. She carried that childhood interest into her adult life and began her career as hat maker when she made her own first hat to wear to church. Friends were so impressed that soon she was receiving calls for the handmade hats, and Unis Originals came into begin.

From working nights and weekends at home, she went on to enter a partnership — Carsala’s Boutique — and then went into business on her own with Unis of Memphis in 1965. Business was so good that Unis expanded to a new location in 1970.

But hats were not the only business of Eunice Carruthers. In 1955 she graduated from LeMoyne College and began a demanding, distinguished career in the education of handicapped children — including teaching, instructor evaluation and vocational placement.

Eunice retired from her teaching career, but still continues with her first love, the making of hats. Her life exemplifies her belief that “no black woman who has ever dared to dream great dreams, and who was willing to pay the price, will fail to realize that dream.”

Eunice is chairperson of the National Organ Transplant Fund and still sells designer hats but no longer creates them.

Eunice passed away on July 17, 2019.