Mamon Powers Jr. Reflects on the Journey to Lakeside Alliance

For Black History Month, Mamon Powers Jr. — Lakeside Alliance Principal and CEO and Chairman of Powers & Sons Construction — reflects on his journey from his first encounter with engineering, to becoming a second-generation business owner, to the creation of Lakeside Alliance.

In my junior year of high school, my father taught me how to lay the foundation to build a garage. “Measure eight feet across, six feet up, and make sure the corners are square,” he told me. I applied the Pythagorean theorem I’d learned in math, and I got it right. The sense of pride and ownership I felt that day launched my journey to become an engineer.

Black engineers were rare back then, but I had no reason to believe I would be anything but successful. I have always been driven to accomplish things that people said I couldn't. Plus, construction is all I have ever known. My father used to work for an African American developer in Natchez, Mississippi, and chased opportunities all the way to Gary, Indiana, before starting his own construction company in 1957. He was the first Black apprentice in the entire state. My grandfather was a general contractor, too.

Because of racial segregation, my father was permitted only an 8th grade education. While he and I walked the same path, our journeys were very different.

When I decided to study engineering, my father took me to see three Black engineers. One of them was Richard Johnson. Johnson attended Purdue University some 40 years after David Robert Lewis became the first Black student to graduate from Purdue in 1894. I can only imagine the obstacles Lewis faced while pursuing his BS in civil engineering. Despite it all, he went on to become an educator and a businessman.

Though Lewis blazed a new trail, it only took those who followed in his footsteps so far. I remember Johnson telling me how he wasn’t allowed to use university facilities. What’s more, West Lafayette was a sundown town then. Johnson had to make it back across the river before dark, else face arrest or worse. It took him nine years to graduate.

I enrolled at Purdue myself in 1966. During those years, I would join my father during breaks from school to work at the family firm which was beginning to expand beyond residential work to take on commercial, industrial and institutional construction projects. I earned my degree in civil engineering in 1970.

Looking back, I realize my father had one advantage I did not: he grew his business by working with other Black-owned developers to win the prime contract on major projects. I was rerouted by policies and practices that were intended to level the playing field, but in practice required me to bid against other Black contractors to win business as a subcontractor.

I grew tired of the expectation that Black contractors could only serve as subcontractors, period. I figured if my grandfather and my father — as well as Mr. Lewis and Mr. Johnson — could thrive despite the hurdles they faced, then surely I could do my part to re-right history.

In 2017, during early talks about the construction of the Obama Presidential Center on Lake Michigan’s shores, my firm and three other Black-owned contractors came together to do just that. We knew that a project of this magnitude in honor of our nation’s first Black president demanded a new approach. So we came together first, then selected a majority contractor that aligned with our mission, and the Obamas’ vision, to join us. With over 250 years of experience between our five firms — Brown & Momen, Powers & Sons, Safeway, Turner and UJAMAA — we became Lakeside Alliance, we flipped the script and we were awarded the project.

My motivation has always come from other Black-owned businesses because we’re all in it together. If Lakeside Alliance is able to empower fellow underrepresented communities in construction from an environmental and financial standpoint, then we will have been successful as a joint venture. We have built a smart, equitable and sustainable business model that can be replicated for years to come, but this is just the start.

I spend a lot of time reading stories of other Black and African American-owned businesses because I know that the lessons from their experiences are something no school can teach you. I hope there are some lessons to be found in my journey — from building a garage foundation with my father, to building the Obama Presidential Center with Lakeside Alliance.