CEO Melvin Gravely’s Reality Check for Black Business Owners in Birmingham

By Keisa Sharpe Jefferson | For The Birmingham Times Speaker, teacher, author and Black business owner Dr. Melvin J. Gravely II spared no words as the keynote speaker for the opening day of the A. G. Gaston Conference at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex. Gravely, majority owner of TriVersity Construction Company based in Cincinnati Ohio, on Tuesday apologized up front for his harsh reality check. Addressing the Black business leaders in he room, he said, “We don’t have an agenda because we’re distracted by what other folks are doing to us, instead of what we can do for ourselves. If we don’t evolve, America has decided that they’ve moved on,” he said. He also offered a straightforward, no-nonsense challenge directly to business owners and asked, “What, if anything, are you reading about business?” Gravely, who is author of “Dear White Friend: The Realities of Race, the Power of Relationships and our Path to Equity” (a compilation of 19 letters on race relations), added, “We have to grow our companies and our businesses. My job as a business owner is to make money, not so I can keep it, but so I can use it to transform my community,” he said....