With two undergraduate degrees from Howard University and an MBA from Vanderbilt, Mark Yates might seem an unlikely candidate to be hawking Obama calendars in Washington, D.C., this week.
But look again.
"Entrepreneurs are the new black," says the 42-year-old from Memphis, Tenn.
The inauguration of the nation's first African-American president is proof of what can happen when preparation meets opportunity.
And so is Yates' presence in D.C., to be a part of history -- but that's just part of it.
He, his father-in-law, Walter Shannon, and Shannon's wife, Cathy, had 10,000 calendars printed -- big, color glossy pages filled with some of the most memorable photographs of Obama and his family, and the post-election front pages of six of the nation's biggest newspapers.
At a table just outside the People's Inaugural Ball inside the Grand Hyatt hotel Saturday night, Yates and his in-laws, who own an art gallery in Louisville, Ky., did a brisk business.
The 24-month, $20 calendar is a high-end production -- that's the preparation of the fine-art dealing Shannons. The opportunity is the estimated 2 million people expected in D.C. for the historic event.
On Inauguration Day, Yates, who is black, plans to be stationed in RFK Stadium parking lot -- where many of the pre-registered buses carrying the masses from across the country will let their passengers loose.
Yates, whose Twitter handle is everydayimhuslin -- is honest; if McCain had won, he probably wouldn't be here, selling anything.
But then, if McCain had won, half of black America wouldn't be descending on D.C.
Of course, McCain didn't win. Obama did.
And that means change -- not just as a buzzword of Obama's campaign, but Yates hopes the change is a visible shift from some black people's standard thinking that you get a job, and you go to work for somebody.
That was then. Before AIG and Bank of American and Lehman Brothers started shaking and the Fed's Troubled Asset Relief Program was born -- a $700 billion bailout.
His first job was at a bank, and "if I were there, I'd be living in fear. I wouldn't have any way of controlling my own destiny."
Selling calendars in D.C. is part of a whole for Yates, a whole that includes being an investment banker, partnering in a project to develop a run-down neighborhood, owning rental properties.
He's not waiting on a government bailout to help him -- not when he can create opportunity and help himself. He's hoping to work with the youth at his church to see what he sees -- the opportunities that abound.
"There's nothing we cannot do."
Email Wendi C. Thomas at thomasw(at)commercialappeal.com.
(Contact Wendi C. Thomas of The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., at thomasw(at)commercialappeal.com.)
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