NASHVILLE, TN —The seventh annual Nashville Black Market (NBM) Black History Month expo is taking Nashville Fairgrounds by storm on February 28 to March 1, and NBM co-founder Carlos Partee says he is beyond excited. Partee said this year’s celebration will continue to work and uplift businesses while celebrating culture and introducing several surprises being kept under wraps until the event. Partee did, however, detail that the expo will be very intentional in relating to the Black experience.
“[Being] Black can be a multitude of things; it could be beautiful, it could be exciting, it could be painful,” Partee said. “I just want to be able to kind of give people the chance to actually see themselves in the arts and in the installations, but also the vendors as well.”
Partee said that many of the installations will be from returning vendors, as well as vendors coming in from out of town. He said the tradition of promoting Black business and commerce with the Nashville Black Market in February is as old as the Nashville Black Market itself, as, if memory serves, the first ever NBM happened to be hosted in February.
“Each year gets bigger, each year gets better. We’ve went from the community center, to a little, small venue, to a bigger venue, to now we’re at the fairgrounds,” Partee said. “The goal is to continue to make it one of the biggest celebrations in the South.”
Partee said he also wants people to understand that they can continue to support Black businesses and the community outside Black History Month, such as through sponsorship, donations, and patronage.
He said that many of Nashville’s Black businesses are often not promoted, leaving them effectively hidden, and that NBM looks to add value to the community by giving people a space where they can be unapologetically themselves in both networking and promoting their entrepreneurship. Partee said spaces such as these are especially important now, as a lot of people are not able to sustain themselves in Nashville, effectively leading to many being priced out.
“If that’s true for a lot of businesses and a lot of business owners, that also makes us wonder, ‘where do we fit in the dichotomy of Nashville’s trajectory for the future?’” Partee said.
Partee said his favorite part of hosting events such as these is when he talks to the business owners afterwards about how much they sold, or about how they were able to find additional opportunities while there. He said that when people bring their families to the function, some of the biggest rewards for all their efforts include seeing kids’ faces while attending the event, hearing musical acts inspire dancing around them, or watching people swell with tears of joy as they get to see a beloved Grammy award-winning artist at a low-cost entry.
Partee said that he knows that NBM and the Black businesses they work with are near and dear to the hearts of the local community. However, Partee also asks what “the people on the outside and the people who make the decisions” that are changing the way Nashville functions, think about where local Middle Tennessean Black business fits into their plans for the future.
Partee said NBM hopes to kick off the 2026 edition of First Fridays in April. Partee said that applications for the Nashville Black Market Black History Month Expo are still open and available at thenashvilleblackmarket.com. He said that if any of our hopeful vendors have any questions, feel free to reach out to vendorinfo@thenashvilleblackmarket.com.
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