The legacies of Black Wall Streets, it's important for people
to remember because there were so many people who have no idea
that there were vital, dynamic places where African Americans
were living out their vision of the American dream, creating opportunity
and hope and progress for their communities.
June 1st 2021 marks a hundred years since the Tulsa Race Massacre,
when as many as 300 people were killed as an angry white mob,
destroyed a prosperous black neighborhood in Tulsa,
Oklahoma, once known as that city's Black Wall Street.
But Tulsa's story is part of a larger history of segregated prosperity in many American cities
The term Black Wall Street really came into popularity around the turn of the century.
So as Jim Crow begins to really take shape and African-Americans
are forced into segregated parts of the cities,
these communities rise up in places like Durham, North Carolina,
and Little Rock, Arkansas, Jackson, Mississippi, and people
began to notice that up there all kinds of businesses
and services that grow there.
And so they kind of take on the name Black Wall Street.
One of the biggest and longest lasting Black Wall Streets
was in Richmond, Virginia--
A neighborhood called Jackson Ward.
So the factors that led to Richmond being the cradle of black
capitalism, lay in the diverse slave economy,
that existed at that time.
So you had African American who were involved and not just agricultural
slavery but also in urban and industrial slavery. after
Then, after the Civil War,
you had this concentrated community of African Americans who have
been working in the city in factories and it feels and rural
areas around Richmond, they just continued to build the institutions
and the communities and the neighborhoods that they had begun
even before the war.
And then you begin to have a lot of really important
financial firsts, such as insurance companies and banks,
which really highlight Richmond as the first
Black Wall Street.
One of the most storied figures in Jackson Ward history was a banker
and businesswoman named Maggie Lena Walker.
You cannot study Maggie Lena Walker and not be fascinated
with her. She was born enslaved in 1864,
right towards the end of the Civil War,
and she really saw economic empowerment of African American
women as the path forward.
Walker started her banking career at a Mutual Aid Society
called The Independent Order of St, Luke.
Founded in 1867, St. Luke was established to help freed slaves
gain economic independence.
In 1901, she said, "Let us have a bank."
And she said, "I'm specifically talking to the women here.
"The good women here."
"Whose money is in this organization," and she was able to bring
that vision to fruition in 1903,
when she became the first black woman bank president.
The St. Luke Penny Savings Bank,
later named the Consolidated Bank and Trust, was acquired
in 2005, but Walker's home in Jackson.
Ward is still standing.
As you see around me, the homes have been restored on the outside
while Mrs. Walker's home
has been restored to its full Glory as much as we could using
artifacts that belong to Maggie Walker and her family.
We still get a lot of people who come in and do our
tours, and they are so amazed saying,
"Why didn't I know about her before?"
"Why have I not heard this story before?"
And it is a story that has been preserved quite fully in Richmond
itself, but not so much across the country.
What is happening now in Jackson Ward
is that those who remember, the stories are coming together
to make sure that they are no longer forgotten.
So the neighborhood may not look as it did when she walked these streets,
but the memories are still there.
In its heyday, I imagine that it was fabulous to live in Jackson Ward.
Any kind of service that you needed,
you could get in Jackson Ward.
and I will just say walking into the
St. Luke Bank, I think had to be a treat.
First of all, Maggie Lena Walker made sure that it was beautifully
appointed with mahogany and marble, and I can just imagine
a maid, a domestic,
working in a white person's home in another part of the city,
and she walks into the bank,
and she's greeted probably by not just her first
name, but she's called miss or missus,
and I just can imagine that in is height, Jackson
Ward was an incredible experience, but then there's also the
dark side. And that is that it is a segregated community.
Maggie Lena Walker accommodates segregation by really lending mostly
in the segregated areas.
So I think in the midst of this affluence and this
dynamism, there's always that dark cloud of racism and Jim Crow,
that kind of just outside there is a world that wants to continue
to treat them as second-class Citizens.
Jackson Ward was a Haven for black business for many years,
but like Tulsa's Black Wall Street,
It too came to an end.
The difference between the end of Jackson
Ward, and the end of Tulsa, is really a difference in degree.
And so for Jackson, Ward, it was more of a slow death.
A wide range of factors caused Jackson Ward's,
economic decline, including redlining, which kept Capital
out of black neighborhoods, slum clearance, where Cities razed
old buildings without rebuilding in certain areas, and a highway
system that cut right through the neighborhood.
But the final end to Jackson Ward's.
Black Wall Street days, came on the heels of the civil rights
movement and desegregation.
So ironically at the very time that you begin to have opportunity
at least legally for African Americans to have equal accommodation,
to be able to get you no equal access to education is at the
same time that these communities have been so undermined
in the decades previous and so when they have choices to make,
they move to the suburbs and the leave really the most vulnerable
and needy living in places like Jackson Ward.
The occurrence of diminishing
Black wealth has a long history in our country.
I mean really takes root in slavery.
There you have hundreds and hundreds of years of unpaid black
labor, and then being disenfranchised and their wealth being undermined
in other ways.
I think that we just really have to deal with this long-standing
American exploitation of African Americans.
You can go to your bank tomorrow and you can say until you as
a corporation start to speak on our behalf,
I want all my money.
In recent years, there has been a movement to reinvest funds into Black banks
and businesses. One of the organizations advocating for this
financial shift is Bank Black USA which helps people find and
invest in Black banks.
We saw that there was this call to action for people to move their money from the
larger institutions that had
maybe a history of discriminatory practices and predatory
lending practices, and move that money to MDIs which are
Minority Depository Institutions.
According to the FDIC, MDIs are more likely to lend to lower
and moderate-income communities and help promote economic
viability in these areas,
So, we started researching these MDIs and we quickly found out that Black financial
institutions are under supported and under capitalized,
right? Black banks are in decline.
For example, there was like, 50 of these institutions
in 2001 and in 2021 there's barely 20.
Our solution was to create resources for people to be able to
compare the banks and services, and financial help the community
impact, because we do believe that these MDIs
can play an integral role in closing that racial wealth
gap but they're undersupported.
If you don't learn about the origin and history of Black wealth,
you'll fall into the trap of thinking that there was no
Black wealth. Take time to learn about Jackson Ward, take time to
learn about Durham, take time to learn about Tulsa.
Let's bring these stories forward, and remember those times of Black
excellence, it can come again, if we follow the road map
that they set before us.