But it is not a mistake, as a tall man in a hat and carrying a thick stack of leaflets makes clear. It is part of a new campaign by black merchants and a black business group to promote black-owned companies and to convince black consumers that they are responsible for their neighborhood's economy.

Buy where WE are," say the leaflets, which urge shoppers to attend a unity rally today. "When you need it, look for and support African-American businesses."

The store is having trouble all too familiar in this recession. And the owner agonizing over falling revenues is a black woman, which makes the store rare enough for a local black business group to start a self-help campaign to keep its doors open.

Black businesses are a tiny percentage of the American economy, and Washington is no exception. But unlike other big cities, the capital has a predominantly black population, a black Mayor and a mostly black City Council. Still, the last Economic Census, conducted by the Census Bureau in 1987, shows that only about a third of all businesses here, 8,275 of 29,244, are black-owned.

Kid-A-Rama is one of those, a children's clothing store that opened in 1984 in the shopping center in one of the city's most economically deprived neighborhoods, Northeast Washington. The owner, Doris D. Williams, who is black, studied business in college but never finished her degree. Still, she worked hard, and the small store flourished.

"Every year I had increased sales," said Ms. Williams one afternoon this week, standing between the baby shoes and toddlers' discount T-shirts in her store. Business was good enough that in 1990 she moved to a larger store in the shopping center.

"The decline started last year, and its been totally downhill," Ms. Williams said, her voice firm but tired. Slowly, she began to fall behind in paying taxes and creditors.

"A whole year of that made me stop and think, can I really survive in this neighborhood?" she said.

Ms. Williams knows that like thousands of small businesses across the country, hers is a victim of the recession. But she also sees a way out, if only black consumers were more deliberate about how they spend their money. Rather than shopping at department stores, they should patronize black businesses to shore up the meager economic base in their neighborhoods, she says.

Ed Murphy, the tall man with the leaflets, agrees. The energetic chairman of the African-American Business Association mobilized a group of black businesses to help Ms. Williams keep her store open by encouraging blacks to buy from blacks. The group's rally today drew several hundred people; dozens crowded into Ms. Williams's store, generating more revenue than she had taken in in months.

"The whole idea is self-help," said Mr. Murphy, who opened his first restaurant in 1964. He refused to blame the hurdles black entrepreneurs have commonly faced, like racism, red-lining -- when banks would not loan money to businesses in minority neighborhoods -- and high insurance rates.

"Our problem has nothing to do with white people, we're not mad at the Koreans, and we're not going to sit back and wait for the government to come and help us," Mr. Murphy said. "Black businesses are dwindling so fast it's shocking. This underlying problem in our community was proven in the Los Angeles riots. If more African-Americans owned businesses, we'd have more to protect."

Though the nation is about 12 percent black, only about 3 percent of the 13.7 million American companies were black-owned in 1987, the Economic Census found. Those 424,000 black-owned companies generated just 1 percent of American business receipts -- $19.8 billion, compared with $1.9 trillion for all businesses.

One reason for the disparity is that 94 percent of the black companies are small, mom-and-pop operations. The average income of a black business in 1987 was $47,000, but more than half had receipts of below $10,000.

Of the black-owned businesses, a mere 189 black businesses had more than 100 employees. "That's not much of an economic base," David Abner, a professor of marketing at Howard University's School of Business, said in an interview.

Paradoxically, most of the best and brightest black business people are being recruited into white companies rather than starting businesses of their own, Mr. Abner said.

"For the most part, my students are management oriented towards opportunities in corporate America, not in entrepreneurship," he said.

Still, Ms. Williams thinks the neighborhood can be persuaded to support black-owned businesses. "We have to show our children this is a black business, this is how it works, and you can do this too if you want," she said.

The Kid-A-Rama appeal may tug at heartstrings, but it must compete with capitalist instincts.

"I think it's a great idea and probably I'll shop here more often," Ethellen Richardson, a 55-year-old office cleaner, said earlier this week after learning that the store where she bought her granddaughter's clothes was black owned. "But I'll still look around for the best bargain."