Bogolan Put Fulton on the Map

Just as rising rents were beginning to take hold in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in the 1990s, one couple organized the eclectic mix of black-owned businesses on Fulton Street, leading to a cultural boom that preserved — at least for a while — much of what made the neighborhood great.

Ibon Muhammad and her late husband, Bilal, owned a small clothing store called Wise Up at DeKalb Avenue and Ashland Place. As rents began to rise, the pair realized that the only way to ensure that the businesses remained there would be to collaborate. So, they formed an alliance in the early 1990s and named it Bogolan, after an African fabric also called mud cloth.

But Bogolan was much more than a merchant’s association.

“It brought the African-American community together,” said Ibon Muhammed. “All types of people liked the concept of an afro-centric cultural district.”

It was also a response to a familiar process that would truly take hold in the new millennium.

“Gentrification was coming — it had already hit Park Slope,” she said. “[Bogoloan] was a reaction to displacement.”

And for around a decade Bogolan created “The Nile on Fulton Street” — a strip rich in African-American businesses, art and culture. The group also organized many of the services that now are often handled by Business Improvement Districts, such as common advertising and sanitation services, and even took out health insurance plans as a group.

The Muhammads’ group gained citywide, and eventually national, notoriety, leading to numerous award ceremonies and recognition from big timers around New York.

“We were getting calls from all over the country saying, ‘We want a Bogolan here!’” Muhammad recalled. “We were like, ‘We just want to sell t-shirts!’”

She added, “But the point was this was something that was needed. A place to showcase the best of black culture. A place for black artists to do their thing.”

Eventually the workload became too much to bear for the Muhammads, who struggled to cope with rising rent while also leading Bogolan.

“We were meeting with someone everyday, a banker, a politician, it became overwhelming,” Muhammad said.

Ibon and her husband withdrew from their leadership role around 2002, and within a year the group was defunct.

Bilal Muhammad, who was key in organizing and promoting Bogolan, passed away in 2005. That year, Errol Louis called him "one of Brooklyn's unsung civic heroes" in The Daily News. Ibon Muhammad still smiles when recalling her husband riding his horse in the Atlantic Antic, or up and down Fulton Street.

Not surprisingly, she has received calls recently to revive the group; the issue of rising rents is as much a concern now as it was in the 1990s.

“Gentrification, it’s always the same story,” she said. “Unless you find a way to stabilize and preserve what’s there, you’re out.”