Filmmaker and activist Kimberly Latrice Jones has shared a provocative take on how Blacks can achieve robust economic empowerment.
She is arguing that the future of large-scale Black economic growth may lie in a return to the American South.
Speaking during an appearance on Vault Empowers, a talk show hosted by Brandi Harvey, Jones made a bold case for concentrating Black talent, labor, and investment in the region where African Americans already possess significant economic and cultural roots.
“Everybody Black from the North should move back to the South,” Jones said. “All of us. We should all move back to the South and we should take over from there.”
Building Economic Power From Existing Foundations
Jones tied her perspective around a broader vision of Black self-sufficiency and economic collaboration rather than starting entirely new systems from scratch.
Referencing conversations with activist Gary Chambers, she argued that the South offers unique advantages because it contains the nation’s highest concentration of Black residents, skilled labor, and Black-owned land.
“If Black people are going to create our idea of mobilization and having our own settlement, the only place we should do it is the South,” Jones said.
According to Jones, many of the building blocks for stronger Black economic networks already exist throughout Southern states.
A Blueprint Hidden in the Cotton Industry
To illustrate her point, Jones pointed to the textile supply chain and the opportunities she sees within it.
She described a Black-owned cotton farming operation in the Carolinas and noted that Black manufacturers already exist in parts of the South. The challenge, she argued, is filling the missing links between production and finished goods.
Jones explained that cotton typically moves through several stages before becoming clothing: farming, processing, thread production, and manufacturing.
“There is no reason why we can’t come together in the South and fill in those other two spaces,” she said.
One gap she highlighted is the lack of Black-owned thread production facilities.
“The one thing that we don’t have at all is a Black threader,” Jones said. “There is no reason why we can’t all come together and create that Black threader.”
Why the South?
Jones argued that Southern states already contain the resources necessary to support broader economic cooperation among Black-owned businesses.
Rather than creating industries from the ground up, she believes communities can build upon existing networks of Black farmers, manufacturers, foresters, entrepreneurs, and landowners.
“You would be starting the whole process from scratch in other places,” she said. “In the South, you’re not starting that from scratch.”
Her comments echo a growing conversation among some Black business leaders and activists who advocate for strengthening economic ecosystems through ownership, supply-chain development, and regional investment.
A Broader Conversation About Wealth Building
Jones’ remarks arrive amid ongoing discussions about the racial wealth gap, Black entrepreneurship, and strategies for creating generational wealth.
For supporters of this approach, economic power grows when communities control more stages of production, from raw materials to finished products. Critics, however, note that large-scale migration and regional economic concentration would face significant logistical, financial, and political challenges.
Still, Jones believes the South offers a unique opportunity because of its existing infrastructure and deep historical ties to Black communities.
“The South is where we have our highest concentration,” she said. “It’s where ancestrally we own the most land.”
For Jones, the message is ultimately about recognizing untapped potential.
“We can all do this together,” she suggested, arguing that the foundations for greater Black economic collaboration may already be in place, waiting to be expanded.
