Banking has a racist history in the US
Banking in the United States has a long history of racial injustice. In 1874, thousands of Black people saw their savings wiped out when Freedman s Bank collapsed. The government-chartered bank, started for newly freed Black Americans, promised to return some of the lost funds to customers, but most received nothing or pennies on the dollar.
Shawn Rochester, author of The Black Tax, told Insider that the Freedman Bank collapse bred distrust of banks among Black Americans.
Freedman s was marketed as a Black bank but actually run by white managers, Rochester explained. Those managers used Black customers money in risky ways, and lost a total of $3 million from 61,000 Black depositors, most of whom had been members of the Union Army.