As the federal economic stimulus package winds its way into “shovel ready” construction projects in cities and towns across America, it’s a useful exercise to consider how to involve minority contractors in the effort to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure.

Look no further than the example of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, which opened in August 2004 after two years of construction on a site along Cincinnati’s Ohio River waterfront.

The Freedom Center’s mission — to given contemporary relevance to the lessons of history as embodied in the saga of the Underground Railroad in antebellum America — was embodied in the manner in which the facility was designed and constructed. The Underground Railroad was perhaps America’s first example of racial cooperation, in which free blacks and sympathetic whites came together to help enslaved Africans reach freedom. Their effort helped undermine slavery in the United States and it is remembered today in the Freedom Center’s stirring exhibits and programs.

Those who guided the development of the Freedom Center, led by then President Ed Rigaud, went about insuring that the spirit of racial cooperation was carried forward in the design and construction of the museum itself. It started with the selection of an architectural team consisting of an Indianapolis-based minority firm (Blackburn Associates) and a majority firm from Portland, Oregon (BOORA Architects). Their design was executed by dozens of construction firms, of which nearly 40% were minority-owned, an unheard of percentage then — and today.

The inclusion of so many minority firms was intentional and strategic. The Freedom Center took several common sense actions to insure that at every stage of the construction process, minority firms had the opportunity to bid — and win — the more than 50 trade contracts that were eventually let for the $158,000,000 facility.

Those actions are recounted in a Channel 12 Newsmakers, by Dan Hurley, the host of a weekly public affairs program, Newsmakers (Hurley served as an early consultant on the Freedom Center project). Hurley interviewed J. Steven Justice, an attorney with the law firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, who oversaw the project’s strategy to embrace minority and women contractors. Justice’s main assertion is worth emphasizing: it doesn’t take government regulations or complex negotiations to bring minority contractors to the table. Instead, it’s simply a matter of plain common sense.