How One Potter is Building What Corporate Allyship Won’t
By Devonte Barr, Reporter
Every February, the same theater unfolds. Corporations swap their logos for sepia-toned filters. Fast-food chains roll out “celebration” meal deals. Somewhere between the targeted ads and mandatory HR modules, we’re supposed to believe this month actually benefits the people it claims to honor.
It’s no secret that Black History Month has become a masterclass in corporate reputation laundering. The same institutions that maintain pay gaps, discriminatory hiring practices, and boards nearly devoid of Black leadership spend February performing allyship with the precision of a marketing calendar. The return on investment for these campaigns is measurable. The return for Black communities is not.
That disconnect matters, especially in working-class places like San Pedro, where Black-owned businesses navigate February as another month of survival rather than opportunity. For April Adewole of of Adewole Pottery, the month brings visibility — but not necessarily material change.
Born and raised in Compton, April has been working her craft for 15 years. She trained at Long Beach Community College, where her passion for ceramics first sparked, then taught pottery at the Community Health Center in Long Beach before moving to studio gigs at Clay on First and Blue Water Clay. Now she’s at Crafted in San Pedro — a shared marketplace where she maintains her own studio space, teaches workshops, sells her work, and collaborates with the community. Walk through Crafted on any weekend, and you’ll find people gathered around her wheel: some learning to throw for the first time, others purchasing her functional stoneware, many just watching her hands shape clay with the ease of someone who’s put in the hours.
“I feel like BHM is maybe a time where I have more eyes on me because I’m Black,” April said. “I feel I’m more responsive, too, maybe. Like I exist, because it’s February.” Within the market at Crafted, though, that visibility has historically been muted — February passing more quietly, without a noticeable increase in engagement or awareness tied specifically to Black History Month.
This year, she noticed something different: more Black vendors sharing the space. “This is actually the first year we’ve had an influx of Black businesses here at Crafted,” April said. Rather than waiting for institutional recognition, she began helping to initiate what she describes as the market’s first collective Black History Month presence — not as a single sanctioned program, but as an active, visible conversation about Black creators, their influence on the market’s culture, and the specific history of Black entrepreneurship in San Pedro. The effort underscores a familiar reality: when institutions fall short, Black communities are often left to build meaning themselves.
But strip away the corporate noise, and there’s real work being done — not in boardrooms, but in shared studio spaces like Crafted, where Black entrepreneurs are building something tangible. April’s presence there isn’t symbolic. It’s structural: she’s teaching the next generation, creating a local economy, and refusing to wait for permission or recognition to matter.
Confrontation is exactly what Black History Month now avoids. In San Pedro, programming centers on individual achievement while sidestepping structural barriers related to waterfront development, local hiring practices, and access to capital. April’s work demonstrates the alternative — not a February event, but a year-round presence. Weekly workshops. Returning customers. Economic opportunity that doesn’t vanish on March 1. Her studio at Crafted is what showing up consistently looks like, not performing solidarity for a month.
“As a solo Black entrepreneur, it can be difficult to access opportunities or be included in broader conversations about local business and culture,” April said. “Even within my own shop, I am frequently questioned about whether my work is truly handmade. That skepticism can be exhausting — it speaks to how easily Black craftsmanship is doubted or erased.”
Recognition, she noted, is often temporary rather than transformative. But she shows up anyway. Every weekend at Crafted: teaching someone to throw for the first time, firing pieces for regulars and collaborating with other vendors. The skepticism doesn’t stop the work. What matters is that the studio stays open, the community keeps gathering and the economy keeps moving through her hands. That’s not inspiration — that’s just what happens when you refuse to wait for the system to validate you before you start building.
The problem isn’t acknowledgment, but rather substitution. Recognition replacing redistribution. Celebration standing in for accountability. A month of internet posts filling the space where year-round contracts, capital and trust should be.
When I asked April whether Black History Month still serves a purpose — whether she actually benefits from it — she offered something more nuanced than dismissal. “For Black people, when we go to the movies, we don’t go saying we’re going to go see a white movie, we’re just going to see a movie,” she said. “But for a lot of white people, going to see a movie with a Black lead is seeing a Black movie. So until that goes away, BHM is what we got.”
Until white stops being the default setting — in hiring, in lending, in whose craftsmanship gets trusted without interrogation — February remains necessary. Imperfect, performative, and still necessary. That’s not cynicism. That’s just clarity.