Starting in February 2023, about 30 mostly Latino workers moved into the Lancaster Motel in Lancaster from the Boston area. They were working under three-month contracts at a nearby manufacturer.
The staffing agency that hired them turned to Ruby and Brian Berryman, the couple who purchased the motel in July 2019 (about 15 years after moving to the area themselves) to provide temporary workforce housing.
“That created a unique challenge for the staffing agency,” says Ruby Berryman. “The [local] culture didn’t match with the food the workers were used to.”
According to the 2020 Census, a little over 1,800 of the town center’s 1,941 residents identified as white. Yet as Black business folk who themselves successfully integrated into the community, Brian Berryman says their business was uniquely positioned to work with the newcomers. “The staffing agency recognized that we would play a unique role in this ethnic mobility,” he says.
The couple came up with a plan, creating a community kitchen where the workers and locals could cook and dine together. “[It] was a good way to integrate them into the community,” Ruby Berryman says.
The experience allowed local residents and workers to form relationships and learn about each other’s lives through cooking. The community building provided by the couple had effects beyond the contract’s August end date.
“A few of them were able to stay in the community and arrange permanent housing,” Ruby says.
“There were a few [Latino] people in the area before,” Brian says. “But that did give [the community] a shot in the arm.”
It is all part of the couple’s [communal] philosophy. “People who ordinarily would not come together come together in our space,” Ruby says. “In general, we are community-minded people, and that’s been part of our success here.”
A Changing Population
The Lancaster Motel’s story is just one example of how NH’s population is becoming more diverse. The 2020 Census showed the state’s population at less than 90% — 87% to be precise — White for the first time in census history.
Though still dwarfed by its white population, the number of minorities in NH grew by 74% between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, to 177,000, roughly 13% of the state’s population. That growth is largely due to migration from other states, according to Ken Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of NH. Johnson says several factors attract people to NH, including its natural amenities and a lower cost of living overall.
As NH’s population becomes more diverse, that diversity is not evenly spread throughout the state. “What those numbers tell me is that there is a growing trend for people of color in this state,” says James McKim, president of the Manchester chapter of the NAACP and founder of Organizational Ignition, a business consultancy that also assists companies with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. “What we don’t look at, and could be more telling, are those numbers at a local level.”
The increase of people of color happened mostly in urban areas. Johnson says 22% of Manchester adults are people of color, significantly higher than the state average of 11% among adults. In Nashua, that number is almost 26%.
“The diversity is very geographically uneven,” Johnson says. “The economic opportunities in the urban areas are greater. In a place like Coos County, there are opportunities to work in the recreational field, but those tend to be seasonal.”
Only three counties in NH experienced population declines between the 2010 and 2020 censuses, according to the NH Fiscal Policy Institute, and all three are rural communities that tend to be less diverse. Coos County, where the Lancaster Motel is located, saw the steepest decline (5.4%) while the populations of Sullivan and Cheshire counties declined 1.6% and
0.9% respectively.
A More Diverse Younger Generation
New Hampshire’s population is diversifying most among young people. Among minorities under 18 years old statewide, 20% identify as people of color, an increase of 16,800 —almost 48% — from the 2010 Census. “Change is coming to New Hampshire from youngest to oldest,” Johnson says.
He adds that the fastest-growing minority group is bi-racial/multiracial people, which grew to 54,564 people in 2020, an increase of almost 203%.
By contrast, the under-18, non-Hispanic white population declined in 2020 by 47,200, a drop of about 19%, leading to an 11% total reduction in the state’s under-18 population.
“New Hampshire’s population is mostly white, and the population is most white at the oldest ages,” Johnson says. “At the ages at which people are having children, the population is more diverse.”
Immigration also plays a role in NH’s growing diversity, with almost 88,000 residents registered as foreign-born, according to the 2022 American Community Survey 1-year estimate. But most immigrants don’t come to the Granite State first but rather after spending time in another part of the country, often the Boston area.
“New Hampshire’s minority population is growing both by natural increase and by migration,” Johnson says, adding immigrants coming to NH tend to be more economically secure and have higher levels of formal education than those settling in other parts of the country.
Leaders must take foreign immigration—as well as the in-migration from other U.S. states—into account as the state’s economy evolves with its diversifying population, says Anthony Poore, president and CEO of the NH Center for Justice
and Equity.
“Eight percent of the population speaks a language other than English at home,” he says.
Poore says, though many think of Latinos—a group that grew by 62% —when they think of immigrants, the state’s Black population has grown mostly due to refugee resettlement. According to the Census, the Black community experienced 37% growth between 2010 and 2020. About 38% of Black Granite Staters are foreign-born.
“We have to deal with some of the constraints some of these communities have dealt with,” Poore says, explaining that many arrive as political refugees with “all of the negative consequences such as PTSD, a lack of financial resources and limited education.”
Creating Infrastructure
In the last three years, more has been done to cultivate and support entrepreneurship among communities of color in NH, including the formation of the Business Alliance for People of Color (See story on page 46).
“You’re starting to see a recognition that not only can we move our communities forward individually, but at an institutional level,” Poore says. “As our numbers continue to increase and we’re able to affect social and economic change, people recognize the need to create institutions.”
One such institution is The NH Community Development Finance Authority’s Community Navigator Pilot Program —funded by a $2.5 million American Rescue Plan Act grant through the U.S. Small Business Administration—which focuses on “addressing the barriers for businesses owned by women, socially and economically disadvantaged, and underserved entrepreneurs, with a particular focus on microenterprises, cooperatives and early-stage business development,” according to the CDFA website. “CDFA will invest in partner organizations around the state to advance small business development and expand wealth-building pathways in NH.”
The program provides underserved entrepreneurs access to business counseling; marketing, operations, business planning, and strategy development; training and skills development resources, access to capital and other support.
“Was it helpful? Yes,” Poore says of the program. “Was it enough? No. We need to do more.”
There is no official registry to track the number of minority-owned businesses in NH. However, the Manchester NAACP started a minority-owned business registry in 2023, where business owners can be listed voluntarily. As of Jan. 2, there were 136 entities listed.
McKim says the actual number is far higher because many businesses run by people of color are sole proprietorships or informal entities.
“We have microenterprises and small businesses popping up,” says Poore, adding that though sole proprietorship is a great entry point, people need the chance to expand and formalize to really advance their communities economically.
A history of discrimination resulting in poor credit, lack of access to capital and a small pool of experienced entrepreneurs to serve as mentors are only some of the issues communities of color face, says Poore.
“Historically, people have not had the experiences people of color have had in northern New England,” McKim says. “People of color here who’ve been here long enough, have experience interacting across difference.” For some people of color coming to NH, particularly from larger cities, “there’s less of an understanding of how to get along in a predominantly white area,” he says.
And as diversity grows in NH, it requires a shift in attitudes and perspectives in a still predominantly white state. “We need to work on changing the narrative,” Poore says. “People should be thinking of us not as takers but as critical contributors to the overall health and prosperity of the state.”
Even in the state’s urban areas where there is more diversity, Poore says a changing population brings out the worst in some. One recent example he points to is the racist assault against Mammadou Dembele, a vice president at Bangor Savings Bank, as he left a local restaurant in Portsmouth in late November.
The attack led to leaders from NH’s Black community holding a gathering to protest the attack, urge it be investigated as a hate crime and bring to light the dangers faced by people of color in the state, according to a report from NH Public Radio.
“What you see is those who don’t believe in diversity, equity, justice, inclusion,” Poore says of the attackers. “Those people are popping up.”
Finding a Niche
The insidious effects of racism on the mental health of people of color prompted Nicole Sublette to found Therapists of Color, which launched in April. Sublette says her therapists regularly work with patients who say their experiences of racism in NH are not taken seriously.
“They come into session and feel like they’re often being gaslit,” Sublette says. “I think one thing that New Hampshire specifically has a problem with is that, because it’s predominantly European-American, it doesn’t recognize it has a problem with prejudice.”
Her practice not only services patients from a growing population sector but also looks to the future by providing a safe space for other future therapists of color to practice, learn, help their community and grow in their careers.
“All the clinicians who work for me are working towards licensure,” she says. “This is incredibly important because it offers a safe space to practice and not have white supervision in mental health.”
She adds that she pays clinicians at above-market rates to break cycles of poverty and lower barriers to entry into a field where a 2018 American Psychological Association report found 86% of professionals are white.
“I already worked in three of the whitest states,” says Sublette, who is also licensed to work in Vermont and did some work for an agency in northern Massachusetts. “There is a lack of mental health care therapists and definitely a lack of therapists of color.”
Johnson says he expects communities of color to continue to grow in coming years, meaning businesses will need to make efforts to cater to them. “The minority child population is going to age over the next 10 years,” he says. “To the extent that has implications for businesses, that’s something they’ll have to take into account.”
Greater diversity also means a more varied taste palette, creating fertile ground for food-oriented businesses—a traditional entry point for newcomers into the business world—such as Keene International Market, owned by Chuda Mishra, a former Bhutanese refugee who came to the Granite State in 2009.
Though only about 4% of Keene’s 23,047 residents are foreign born, according to the 2020 Census, since launching in September 2021, Mishra says he has found success by catering to isolated immigrant populations who have few options with it comes to retailers selling the products that they grew up with.
“I ran into so many people who moved to the countryside from bigger cities and the most common thing among them was food,” Mishra says. “It prompted me to say: it looks like there is a need.”
Though initially focused on South Asian products, he diversified his offerings after finding that a burgeoning Filipino community in northern NH and Vermont were willing to travel to Keene to find products from their homeland. He says his market serves as a de facto meeting point for many Northern New England immigrants.
“That’s why people drive a couple of hours to get certain things,” Mishra says. “Even though they can get those things online.”
Ruby Berryman of the Lancaster Motel, says that though new arrivals will have to adjust to life here, current residents will also have to learn how to live in a different world. “It’s about integrating [their] culture with the culture that’s here so it’s complimentary and not adversarial.”
Kevin G. Andrade is a New England- based freelance journalist focused on immigrant communities. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter): @KevinGAndrade.
Current Issue - April 2024