We were lucky to catch up with Trey Benham recently and have shared our conversation below.

Trey, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Black Bartow Events started with a mission of increasing the comfort zone of the black community of Bartow County, while providing both, educational and entertaining, options in our community.

For years, downtown Cartersville didn’t have much of a black presence, despite being surrounded by several predominantly black neighborhoods. The stories of lynchings in downtown, dating back to as far as 1916, still remains on people’s minds. And those lynchings are actually what caused black people to stop doing business in downtown Cartersville, segregating themselves and forming their own neighborhoods. Well in 2020, we felt it was time for our people to not stay hidden in a couple of neighborhoods, but to step out in the spotlight. Our visibility, our presence, and our leadership increases our impact on the community as a whole and gives black children someone to look up to. It gives us a voice.

We intentionally started holding events in the center of downtown. We bring in entertainment that matters to our culture. We bring in guests speakers with something important and uplifting. But most importantly, we bring in other small black businesses and give them the opportunity to spread awareness on their products and services. Our hope is that we inspire the next generation of black leaders to not let anyone or anything from their past to stop their shine. We simply want to erase invisible lines.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Black Bartow Events was unofficially started in 2019. A lady from my church, Gloria Finney, got a group of people together to start discussing ways to increase voting amongst the younger generation. After a couple months of meeting, we decided to hold a block party with a focus on getting people registered to vote. After the success of the block party, three of us, Scottlin Smith, Todd Dean, along with myself, started discussing other ways we could make an impact in the community.

I’ve had the pleasure of serving on the Cartersville-Bartow Chamber of Commerce, American Red Cross, and a few other organizations. My business partners both have their own non-profits, so with the connections we had made over the years, combined with our marketing and event planning experience, we knew we could successfully put together several events that mattered to our community, our culture. But we didn’t want to just host fun parties. We wanted these events to also have an educational value and provide a way to uplift the entire community.

Our events are always going to accomplish three things, educate all that attend, provide black businesses an avenue to excel and spread awareness, and our events are most definitely going up be fun.

Two events that I am most proud of are the Black History Month Parade and the Black Excellence Awards and Gala, both held for the first time in 2022.

The Black History Parade was the first of its kind in downtown Cartersville and the response from the community was incredible. The parade returns this year on Saturday, February 25th. We are looking for school bands, fraternities, sororities, dance teams, businesses, etc. to participate. We look forward to seeing the participation grow.

The Black Excellence Awards and Gala was our first black tie event and it was an opportunity to honor so many legends, both past and current, in our community that have put in a ton of work. Each award category was named after people in the community that have inspired Black Bartow in some form or fashion, including our parents. I think one thing that made that night so meaningful was the fact that we were able to educate the attendees on the attributes of so many great people. Many people had no idea that in 1890 we had black doctors, black grocery stores, and so much more.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

We had to unlearn that “failure is not an option. We were not afraid to fail, and to make sure we went after our dreams with all we had, we had to be unafraid of failing. A lot of times people will talk themselves out of something because it sounds too risky, it’s not the right time, or that someone else already tried and failed. Failure is okay as long as you learn from it and then get up and try again. We came in with the understanding that every event we host may not be well attended but we knew that if we believed in what we offered, worked on perfecting it, eventually people would see the value in what we bring to the table.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

When managing a team it is important to seek out people that are as different from you as possible. You need to have a team around you that offer strengths where you might be weak and can provide a different point of view. To maintain high morale, you must get to know them and truly know what motivates them and what they excel at, even if it’s not 100% business related. This information will get everyone in the right place, bringing out the best of everyone and the best of the business.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/blackbartowevents
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BlackBartowEvents/
• Other: Blackbartowevents@gmail.com