Welcome back to our centennial speaker series. Thank you for joining us for todays event featuring doctor jeanette scott. If this is your first time joining us. My name is donna and i have the honor of serving as the dean of the school of business. 2020 marks a very special year for the school. Its our hundred anniversary and we are celebrating 100 years of purpose driven business education. Since our inception we believed in the power of partnerships to inform and lead change. I very much like to thank the center for Global Security analysis and our wonderful partners the museum of American Finance and the society of new york whose cosponsoring todays conversation. One of the goals of the centennial is to shine the light on the importance that history plays in shaping the future. In the latest book black women in u. S. Finance before the new deal, she explores a period of black financial innovation in its Transformative Impact on u. S. Capitalism. Todays session will take place in three parts. First, my colleague and friend president and ceo of the museum of American Finance will introduce doctor garrett scott. Then she will discuss her book banking on freedom. Following the discussion, we will facilitate audience questions and we ask you type your questions in the q and a section near the bottom of the screen. Im also excited to share that as a participant you will be entered into a raffle to win a copy of the book. Winners will be notified by the end of the week. And finally, before i turn over to do a formal introduction, i do want to remind everyone that both the school and museum rely on your Financial Support to continue our mission so i encourage you to take some time to think about a donation to both of our outstanding organizations. Now i would like to turn it over to david. Thank you, donna and its always great to be back with you and the friends we have. Our speaker today is a native that received her phd at the university of texas and is currently a professor at the university of mississippi. In her research she brings to the floor the issues of race, gender and capitalism. The Research Behind the book is incredible. There are 75 detailed footnotes. The book has received a much praised including awards from the organization of american historians, the association of black women historians, the Southern Historical association for the best book in southern economic history and was also on the shortlist for the highly prized it is a quot quote on qu, innovative and as well as quote on quote beautifully written and deeply researched. She can turn of phrase, and that starts right with the dedication that i like. The book is timely to understanding about the participation within the Free Enterprise capitalist system. To tell us about banking and the amazing story who says about herself but a Laundry Basket on her head. Welcome. Thank you for that wonderful introduction and to kristen for inviting me and everyone who made this possible. Im going to share my screen and we will get started. I also appreciate people taking the time out of their busy schedules to learn more about black womens contribution to the u. S. Finance. So, today i will talk for about 35 minutes and i will talk about the world of black finance in harlem before the 1929 stock market crash. I focus on one company that is the finance corporation. And i use it to explore how lack women use the Financial Institutions like the st. Lukes finance corporation institutions that they lead and control to challenge the constraints of jim crow and economic exploitation. They use Companies Like this to carve out possibilities for themselves in the u. S. Economy and society. They understood the ideas about wealth and value and risks were shaped by race and gender and your place in the economic ladder but they do not simply defined by these factors and processes. They took an active role in shaping the meaning of wealth and risk and opportunity. And while i certainly acknowledge the limitations they face because of their race and gender and class i also want to demonstrate how black women define their values in ways that often ran counter to the kind of messages they see about their worth as citizens and economic actors not just in black communities but also the larger u. S. Economy. So, we should have a good amount of time left for questions and answers. So the best way to understand the corporatio corporation is to women who were finally important, thats Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones. The next slide you are going to see two images. They are not charity and lulu and i only have about three pictures total, but the anonymous women in those images capture their spirit. So, i will start by imagining their early lives in new york to understand the kinds of challenges black women face and then i will describe the order on how the branch formed the corporation and then i will talk about the successes and the challenges that it faced especially the finance Corporation Board that was comprised almost totally of women. Charity hesitated a moment before she stepped onto the dusty streets. What am i doing, she thought to herself, suspended in the car door between her old life that lay behind her and this awful new place. The smell, the noise, the people. So many moving, pressing, now likfliesrising like horse manure street. This was 1885 in the heart and she paused for a while from mostly empty streets of the car beckoning. What would she return to, eight dead babies in two years all of them taken from her one who never took to her breast. Another managed to topple a few steps. There wasnt anything there back in virginia so charity drew in her breath and planted her feet on the unforgiving ground. She dared not look back at the tiny handprint the babys breath misting off of the streetcar window. Eight babies calling her back home. Lulu hesitated a moment before she stepped onto the floor with hundreds of dancers and fingers like herself, but stage like homes of people pressed tightly together in the hard wooden theater seats they sounded like a sudden rush of wind. Now this was harlem, 1916. She paused for a moment between the noisy backstage goingson and the expected audience beyond the curtain. She looked at the pocket she could pour her voice into. So she drew in her breath and planted her feet on the floor and as she stepped into the spotlight, darkness swallowed up the size of the stage where she had stood only a moment ago. She dared not look at the emptiness. So, Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones was her daughterinlaw had very different experiences as Migrant Women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but they did share some things in common. They shared the only surviving child and like hundreds of thousands of black women, they also left the south to pursue better lives in the north, the chance to earn more money, the social etiquette and Sexual Violence of jim crow to find excitement in the big cities of the north. But these women also shared a devotion to the independence order of st. Lukes. This was a secret society that was founded in the 1850s. In 1899 they came under the leadership of the ambitious Maggie Walker and felt its headquarters in richmond saint luke would become one of the most successful and one of the very few largely black women controlled institutions in the country at its peak in the mid1920s, the order ran a bank and Insurance Company, operated a newspaper. It boasted 100,000 members and more than 20 states. It employed nearly 200 people. The overwhelming majority of them and it possessed assets that were the equivalent to about 31 million in modernday dollars. So, one important venture that brought the independent order was the st. Lukes finance corporation headquartered in harlem and organized in the late 19 teens by the new York District of the independent order of st. Lukes. The st. Lukes finance corporation reflects the opportunities open for the women in the 1920s. So there was a complex tapestry made up of thousands of Financial Institutions. These included formal banks and Insurance Companies as well as savings clubs, industrial loan associations, Credit Unions and even finance corporations. And this complex tapestry controlled millions of africanamerican dollars and expanded the boundaries of their dreams. But during the great hydration around world war i however, the increasingly urban and northern black population had the capacity of these Financial Institutions and the strategy the saint Luke Corporation chose to promote reflected some of these anxieties about black womens bodies in these new urban spaces and there were these conflicting tensions that saw black women as both the victims but also the sources of social disorder. Both in the need of financial protection but also new economic opportunities. So, what can women demand of these Financial Institutions like the order of st. Lukes . They decided better Career Options and housing choices. They rejected the orders to police their behaviors and the way they spend their time and so these would be called new negro women were attracted to the promises of investment as a vehicle for civic inclusion, for the political right the Financial Institution that women lead and controlled and experimented in these innovative ways to raise capital struggled with the experience so its 1916 and the struggling new York District of st. Lukes has elected a new president. The harlem st. Lukes had 3. 45 but was more than 400 in debt. It may have been the hand of the wheel and the group of women controlled the lever they incorporated the st. Lukes finance corporation and set their sights on investments in real estate. So, women made up six of the Seven Members of the corporations board and Lulu Robinson jones widowed by 1979, chaired the advisory committee. So, the revised harlem st. Lukes turned to Charity Jones to recruit new members and solidified her status known as the mother of st. Lukes in new york and so through her efforts, the membership sword in the midst of the great migration. Now, it wasnt the joneses womens charms alone that had the resurgent and the numbers. They were laser focused on addressing the needs to revive the order so the new women like i said before tested and expanded the boundaries of these organizations. This modern womanhood and we had scholars that talk about where they stresse stress their cultud political importance, but economic concerns placed high among their priorities. These women and their families desperately needed the jobs and housing. While jones understood this dilemma she likely confronted limited Employment Opportunities as well as the Housing Conditions of skyrocketing rent over policing and overcrowding and segregated sections of the city. So, Robinson Jones and the other women of the Advisory Board were able to borrow 3,000 into the Saint Luke Bank bu the cautious committee would likely either unwillingly invest more in the real estate themes or they would be unable to do so those demands we have to remember were compounded by the racial tariffs that made the cost of credit consideration higher for blacks than it was for whites, so Robinson Jones position is new and returning members as potential investors and she arranged these Fundraising Affairs that combined entertainment and enterprise they raised enough money to secure the mortgage on the building. In 1922, it remodeled its first acquisition that the former convent on 130th and transformed it into the saint luke call. It became the new district headquarters and the harlem st. Lukes spent the equivalent of more than a billion dollars in modern dollars and 1924 they further added to its holdings by purchasing a third property a combination apartment building, restaurant and Retail Stores on the west 139th street which wasnt too far. St. Lukes hall became an important center for business, Community Activities and entertainment, and for bias. So the pastor of the first Imanuel Church called out the hall as the bootlegging and in its saintly name as the pastor of Salem Episcopal Church and adoptive father of harlem renaissance Chelsea Collins calls the hall nothing less than one of the hellholes of god. So, it was very likely that she was in the restaurant and the stores and the office space is in st. Lukes hall and its apartment to help make ends meet and they ran the numbers that was a highly profitable game. It was both in the formal and extralegal economy in harlem. So, lets recount. They make them ambitious and lucrative real estate investments. So, that by 1929 and a little more than a decade, the new york st. Lukes went from being 400 in debt to having more than 5 million. And that is a very conservative modernday dollar having 5 million in properties so as they slid towards economic decline by the end of the decade the failure to sell the corporations stock left it undercapitalized and it was generally more than 10,000 in annual profits and that accounts for 850,000 in modernday dollars but they went from renting the spaces in the halls and they provided jobs for the workforce of two dozen employees but also fund its commitment to nearly 500 harlem families. So, let me stress for a moment these concerns face affordable quality housing, restaurant, retail spaces that offer fair prices and a variety of goods and services, good paying stable jobs respectable amusement and leisure activities. These were really important priorities for black women in particular and the communities in general. These were the central social economic and i would add political concerns that animated those women who were leading the st. Lukes corporation so they raised the equivalents of about 1. 2 million in modernday dollars from the bond offering the amount they were able to raise highlights the democratization of investing among the communities. Let me say that another way. It demonstrates the way that was popular and accessible and also reveals a commitment to the working and middleclass commitment to selfhelp and i highlight the participation in investment and get rich quick schemes. And i have to say 1. 2 million, 1,000dollar loans and these Swanky Affairs cannot explain at least on their own the dramatic rise in the origins but it might also reveal some financing but in the interest of time im not going to go into detail but i do delve into those creative schemes that the ladies of the finance corporations experimented with to raise these funds in such a short amount of time so the economic downturn coupled with past investigations into the similar organizations like Marcus Garvey and the universal Improvement Association really loved the creative financial scheme of all kinds of fraternal and other kinds of organizations which included of course the independent order of st. Lukes vulnerable to the states and that is exactly what happened. In 1928 the state attorney general began an investigation into the board. And after just two hearings, the Court Ordered that it was insolvent and ordered the district to sell its real estate holdings. So just as i imagined at the beginning of my talk how Charity Jones, and this is an actual figure, and Lulu Robinson jones might have felt moving to and through new york city and how they must have felt on their beloved Charity Jones must have felt particularly bereft at the losses because she lost her home and lived in one of the modeledl apartments in the st. Lukes hall. From her will i know that she died in 1929 and she still resided at 127 west 130th street. But it was no longer this glorious st. Lukes hall and that had to be bittersweet. Lulu jones told the census taker she wasnt working, she was unemployed. It isnt clear how active she stayed, but its likely she never again held such a powerful position in a multimillion dollar concern. So, i hope that as i close by illuminating this kind of story i think a fascinating story about the rise and fall of which this story is a part, i try to connect to these major developments to the u. S. History to talk about the reconstruction, the gilded age, the great migration world war i and the new negro era and i am trying to recover the importance and the active role that women played in the development of the modern American Finance capitalism. While i acknowledge the contribution black women made i cannot ignore the aspect of capitalism or the destructive ways the political economy severely limited the opportunities. So looking at the corporation as a kind of case study, we see the investment as a form of community that stand alongside other justice. So when black women and creditors and debt and consumers stock owners of stock and insurance policyholders, they try to transform racial capi