by: Dee Dee Reese
In a corner of town where history has been both forgotten and forged, one man has quietly built a legacy. Not just of property or trucks or titles but of character, of influence, of planting seeds in people when the soil around them was dry.

Born in 1946, Cummings grew up in a shotgun house in North Street, across from Magnolia Baptist Church. He remembers when the city was full of opportunities, when jobs were steady, and families stayed close. For nearly three decades, Mr. Arlenzia Cummings has run a humble inspection and used car business in Shreveport. But what happens inside his shop has always gone beyond business. It’s mentorship. It’s storytelling. It’s survival and wisdom passed between generations.

“I've been called everything but a businessman,” he says, leaning back into memory and observation. “But I didn’t let that stop me. I built something real. And more than that, I tried to help others build, too.”

What started as a family moving business, originally Cummings Transfer, has grown and transformed over the decades. Arleniza explains that “God and his father were the foundations in his life. “He tells of his father and uncles, all with trucks, all from a time when owning something that moved was a form of liberation. They weren’t given much, but they built anyway. “You can't make land,” he says. “And if you've got property, you better keep it. That’s value.”

Arlenzia speaks on buying tax sale property for a few hundred dollars, building equity, investing, and teaching his children and grandchildren how to make money work for them. His grandson just became a licensed commercial pilot headed for a six-figure bonus. “I told him, don’t blow it. Invest it. That’s how we change things.”

He shares story after story of young men who came to him lost some selling drugs, others just drifting, and who walked away with direction. “I had a young man come back four or five years after a conversation we had… he told me, ‘I’m not in the streets anymore. You planted something in me.’ That’s what it’s about. That’s what we’re missing now.”

At the heart of his reflections is a lament and a challenge: that too many young Black men are growing up without real role models. Not just fathers, but men with backbone, with principles, with time to pour into the next generation.

“That foundation is gone in a lot of our communities. But that’s where it starts. That’s what saved me. My father had me in his office as a boy, sitting across from him, learning. That shaped me.”

He’s seen Shreveport change. The decline of industry. The flight of opportunity. The absence of strategic leadership in Black communities has let those opportunities slip away. Still, he’s stayed. He’s poured into his children.

You can reach Cummings Moving LLC at
4635 Greenwood Rd
Shreveport, LA. 71109
318-636-3367