(Bloomberg) -- Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown is beginning his bid to recreate Black Wall Street in Boston.
Brown, 27, is launching Boston XChange, a nonprofit organization that plans to build generational wealth and cultural innovation in Black and Brown communities.
Brown is partnering with Harvard Business School, Roxbury Community College, MIT Entrepreneurship Center, and teammate Jrue Holiday’s JLH Fund to offer up to $250,000 in total grant investment. As part of the offer, grantees will receive three years of coaching and mentorship.
“To be able to give access to capital, create sustainability and culturally competent initiatives, all of these insights have informed us on how to create this program for Boston,” Brown said in a Zoom interview.
Brown has said that he wants to use his platform to create a modern-day version of Black Wall Street, a Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma that was one of the country’s wealthiest in the early 20th century. In 1921, it was burned down, with hundreds of Black Tulsans killed and thousands left homeless.
The member of the 2024 NBA Championship-winning team said he chose Boston because of the wealth disparity. A Boston Federal Reserve Bank 2015 study found the median net worth for white households in Greater Boston was $250,000 while for US Black households, it was just $8.
A more recent study by McKinsey & Co. said it will take as long as three centuries for Black Americans to achieve the same quality of life as their White neighbors, after the racial gap widened in more than half the country in the past decade.
The Celtics guard said he has also had conversations with other NBA players and owners about supporting the Boston XChange.
“Being able to partner with people who have high influence in other places can make it more impactful,” he said.
Brown, a Georgia native, has earned $132 million over the course of his nine-year NBA career. A five-year, $285 million contract that he signed last year will begin in the upcoming season. When the deal ends, he will have earned $416 million.
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