In this interview, the businessman Hardy Joe Long recounts his role in the community of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn as a merchant and active participant in the Fulton-Nostrand United Merchants Association. He enumerates different changes he's seen in the community over the past over fifty years, including racial mixing, economic development, and a cultural renaissance. Long lists different contributions heralded by Restoration, including support for small businesses via the backing of the Merchants Association. He tells of an impoverished childhood in North Carolina, and the ambition that drove him to own a business in New York City -- a dream that was enabled by Restoration's revolving loan fund. At the interview's end, Long details the Merchants Association's campaign to establish the Bedford-Stuyvesant Gateway Business Improvement District. Interview conducted by Bernadette Mitchell.