Hamidah Abdullah rings up one of her few customers for the day. She's had a shop in Newark's downtown for more than 40 years selling body oils, incense, hand made pies and hats.

"Everybody here knows me, I've been here a long time," she says. 

Behind a tall Plexiglass divider, Abdullah crochets a yellow hat for an online order. But that hasn't been enough. She says business is down 70 percent since she reopened six weeks ago.

"As you see, its dead. It's very, very hard right now because there's just no business. I have a lot of inventory. Nobody is buying," she says.

Down the block, at Dan's Hats and Caps, owner Daniel Phillips says it's slow, too. 

"A lot of my regular customers are coming back just trying to help keep the lights and the doors open. But I just need more foot traffic," he says. 

Phillips says the pandemic has made it even harder for small shops like his to compete with giant retailers like Amazon. He says he's no longer taking refunds to keep his customers safe from the virus — making online sales tough.

"It's the squeeze that the mom-and-pop businesses are really feeling," he said. "In the big picture, they're not really looking at the little guy."

About a mile east, in the city's Ironbound neighborhood, Sam Hwang's cosmetics store, Charmiss, is bustling, filled with customers at pre-pandemic levels. He's not worried about the business, but he is worried about everyone's health.  

"It just seems like they kind of forgot about the whole disease," he said. "I'd rather not shut down again. So, you know, to prevent that, I think we should be more careful, that's all."

Hwang took out a loan early on to help wait out the worst of the state's outbreak. But not every business owner has been able to get lending or grant money.

John Harmon is the CEO of the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey. He says just like the pandemic has disproportionately impacted Black and Latino residents, it's also dealt a disproportionate blow to Black businesses.

"If Black businesses were struggling in good times, they've been decimated in this current environment. And some of them will not be able to get off the canvas because this whole pandemic has been a knockout blow," he said.

Newark has launched a $2 million grant program to help 200 businesses. The state has set aside $70 million to provide small businesses with grant funding and also redirected federal CARES dollars to help pay commercial leases. Online applications for the lease assistance program will be available on Aug. 10. 

But Harmon says the economic crisis is also an opportunity for New Jersey to find ways to more equitably distribute contracts and resources to minority entrepreneurs and help level a playing field that was already skewed to begin with.