Shennette garrettscott. It is a first time joining us, my name is Donna Rapaccioli and had the honor of serving as the dean of the belly school of business. 2020 marks a very special year for our School Tickets are 100 anniversary and were celebrating 100 years of purpose driven his education. Since our inception we believe in the power of partnerships to inform and lead change. I very much like to thank the Global Security analysis and a wonderful partners, the museum of American Finance and the society of new york who are cosponsoring todays conversation. One of the goals of the centennial series is to shine the light on the report history plays in shaping the future. In her latest book, banking on freedom black women in u. S. Finance before the new deal, she explores a rich period a black financial innovation and its Transformative Impact on u. S. Capitalism. Todays session will take place in three parts. First, my colleague and friend david callan, president and ceo of the museum of American Finance will introduce dr. Shennette garrettscott. Then she will discuss her book banking on freedom,. Following this discussion will facilitate audience questions. We ask that you type your questions in the q a section near the bottom of the soon screen. Im also very excited to share that as a participant of todays webinar you will be entered into a raffle to win a free ecopy of the book, banking on freedom. Winners will be notified by the end of the week. And finally it for a turn over to david to do a formal introduction i do want to remind everyone that both the Gabelli School and the museum rely on your support to consider a mission. I encourage you to take some time to think about a donation to both of our outstanding organizations. Now id like to turn over to david. Thanks, donna, its great always to be back with you, the ford infringement and, of course, the cfa. Our speaker today is a a native texan who received her phd at the university of texas. Just really a professor at ole miss, university of mississippi. In a research and writing she brings to the fore the issues of race, gender and capitalism. The Research Behind this book is incredible. There are 400 over 475 detailed footnotes. The book has received much praise including awards from the organization of american historians, the association of black women historians, the Southern Historical associations bennett award for the best book in seven economic history and was also on the short list for the prize for the best business book in history and 2020. A friend at the museum and former speaker in this lecture series are George Robinson about this work it is quoteunquote innovative and pathbreaking as well as quoteunquote beautifully written in carefully researched. Shennette can turn a phrase in that starts right with the dedication which i really like to read. Given the social climate in the country today, this book is timely to understanding about the deepseated issues of inclusion and participation within the Free Enterprise capitalist system. To tell us about making on freedom and the amazing story of Maggie Walker said about herself that she wasnt born with a silver spoon in her mouth but rather a Laundry Basket on her head is shennette garrettscott. Welcome. Thank you so much, david for the wonderful introduction and thank you to Kristen Kristin fr inviting me and for everyone who made this possible. So im going to share my screen and the slides and we will go ahead and get started talking. I also appreciate people taking time out of their busy schedules to spend it learning more about black womens contribution to 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 will focus on one company, thats finance corporation and are use to explore how black women use Financial Institutions like the st. Luke finance corporation institutions that they lead and controlled to challenge the constraints of jim crow, sexism, and economic exploitation. They use Companies Like the as lfc to carve out possibilities for themselves in the u. S. Economy and society. They understood that notions, ideas about wealth and value and risk were shaped by gender and by race and by your place in the economic ladder. But they were not simply defined by these factors and these processes. They took an active role in shaping the meaning of wealth and risk and opportunity. While i certainly acknowledge the limitations they faced because of their race and the gender and their class, i also really want to demonstrate how black women defined their values in ways that often ran counter to the kinds of messages that they received about their worth as citizens and its economic actors, not just in black communities but also in the large u. S. Economy. We should have a good amount of time left for questions and answers. The best way to really understand the st. Luke finance corporation is through two women who were vitally important to the venture. Charity jones and Lulu Robinson jones. In the next slide you going to see to make images. They are not charity and lulu. I only have three pictures total of those women but the anonymous women in this images i think captured their spirit. I will start imagining their early lives in new york to understand the kinds of challenges that black women faced, and that i will briefly the independent order of st. Luke, how the Harlem Branch of the order formed the finance corporation, and then i will talk about the successes and the challenges that is faced, especially the finance corporations board which was comprised almost totally of women. Lets get started. Charity. Charity hesitated a moment before she stepped on to the dusty dirt street. What am i doing . She thought to herself, suspended in the street car door between her old life that lay behind her and this awful new place, the smell, the noise, the people. The people, so many moving, pressing, flitting, buzzing now like flies rising from the piles of horsemen who are in the streets. This was 1885 in the heart of the city and charity pause for a while from mostly empty seats of the streetcar beckoning. She glanced back. What did she returned to, eight dead babies in years, all of them taken from her, one can never took to her breast. Another one who managed a few steps. No, there was no bareback in virginia. Charity do in her breath and planted her feet on the unforgiving ground. She dared not look back at the tiny handprint, the babies breath curling off the street car window. Eight dead babies calling her back home. Lulu. Lulu hesitated a moment before she stepped onto the wooden floor, boards slick by hundreds of dancers, black men with even blacker faces, like yourself. The stage homed, people murmured, pressed tightly together in the hard wooden theater seats. They sounded like a rush of wind. Now this was harlem, 1916, and lulu haase for a moment suspended between the noisy backstage goingson and expectant audience just beyond the lip of the thick velvet curtain. She eyed the quite place at the center stage, a pocket she could for her voice into. Lulu drew in her breath and planted her feet on the floor. As she stepped into the spotlight, darkness swallowed up the side of the stage where she stood only a moment ago. She dared not look back at the emptiness, that no workplace, holding onto silence. So Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones, her daughterinlaw, had very different experiences as Migrant Women who moved to new york city in the late 19th and early 20 centuries but he did share some important things in common. They shared charities only surviving child, son. Like hundreds of thousands of other black women, they also left the south to pursue better lives in the north, the chance to earn more money, to escape the humiliating social etiquette and the Sexual Violence of jim crow to find excitement in the big cities of the north. These two women also shared a devotion to the independent order of st. Luke. This was a secret society that was founded in the 1850s by a free black woman. In 1899 the independent order of saint luke came under the leadership of the ambitious Maggie Lena Walker, and from its headquarters in richmond, st. Luke would become one of the most successful black controlled and one of the very few largely black women controlled Financial Institutions in the country. At its peak in the 19 the mid1920s the order ran a bank and insurance company, operator of a newspaper. It boasted 100,000 members in more than 20 states. It employed nearly 200 people, the over one majority of them women, and it possessed assets that were equivalent to about 31 million in modernday dollars. Now when important venture that brought the independent order of st. Lukes both renowned and scanned involved Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones, and that was the st. Luke finance corporation. Headquartered in harlem and organized in the late 19 teens by the new York District independent order of st. Lukes, the st. Luke finance corporation reflects the opportunities that it open for women in u. S. Finance1920s. So there was a complex tapestry made up of thousands, thousan, a black controlled Financial Institutions. These included formal banks and Insurance Companies as well as thrift savings clubs, loan associations, Credit Unions and even finance corporations. This complex tapestry controlled millions of African Americans dollars and it expanded the boundaries of their dreams. But during the great migration, the first great migration around world war i, however, the increasingly urban and northern black population taxed the capacity of the Financial Institutions so the tapestry as frayed and born in places and the boundaries of those dreams fixed. So the strategies, the st. Luke finance corporation chose to promote reflected some of these anxieties about black womens bodies in these new urban spaces. There were these conflicting tensions that some black women as both the victim but also the sources of social disorder, as both in need of financial protection but also new economic opportunities. So the command stretched these Financial Institutions like the independent order of st. Lukes. They decide better Career Options and housing choices. They rejected these efforts to police their behavior and the way they spent their leisure time. These would be called new negro women were attracted to the promises of investment as a vehicle for civic inclusion, for political rights, and as a way to destroy and dismantle jim crow. But they also grew really tired of these pages that implied that men were the proper producer and consumer of these investment products, these markers of citizenship. So the Financial Institutions that women lead and controlled experimented with innovative ways to raise capital but they also struggled with experience and, of course, the intractable problems of racial and sexual discrimination. My book, banking on freedom, deals with a number of the sorts of tensions but here im going to focus on the rise and the fall of the st. Luke finance corporation. It is 1916 and the struggling new York District of st. Lukes which is headquartered in harlem has elected a new president. His name is dennis rice. The harlem st. Lukes had 3. 45 in its coffers but was more than 400 in debt. Rice may have been the formal hand at the wheel but an Ambitious Group of women controlled the levers. So in 1981, 21 members, most of them women, incorporated the st. Luke finance corporation and they set their sights on investment in real estate. Women made up six of the Seven Members of the finance corporations board, and Lulu Robinson jones who was widowed by 1909 chaired the advisory committee. So the revived new york st. Luke finance corporation turn to charity joan to recruit new members and she solidified her status. She was known as a mother of st. Through our efforts, membership in the new York District sword in the midst of the great migration. It was not the jones womens charm alone that fueled a resurgence in the harlem st. Lukes number. They are laser focused on addressing they need a black women, lit a spark that revived the order. So the new negro women like us to before, tested and expanded the boundaries of these organizations. They were this model of modern black womanhood, and we have scholars the talk about the new negro women and they really stress their cultural and their political importance, but economic concerns really placed high among their priorities. These women and their families desperately needed jobs and housing. And robinsonjones understood this dilemma intimately, i suspect. In the midto late 19 19 teens, like many young black women, she likely confronted limited Employment Opportunities as well squalid housing conditions, of skyrocketing rent, over policing and overcrowding, and segregated section of the city. So robinsonjones and the other women of the Advisory Board were able to borrow 3000 in richmond but the banks very cautious finance committee was likely is unwilling to invest more in this real estate scheme but it just unable to do so. Because investment in new York Real Estate even then required substantial capital, and those capital demands we have to remember were compounded by the racial tariffs that made the cost of credit and consideration higher for blacks than it was for whites. So robinsonjones envision distant and returning members as potential investors. An opera singer, she also understood the business of leisure in harlem, and she arranged the Fundraising Affairs that combined entertainment and enterprise. So, for example, she organized this fundraising reception at the manhattan casino and change reece europe famous orchestra provided the music. In just a few months, the harlem st. Lukes raised enough money to secure a mortgage on a building. It purchased the former convent on west 100 30th street in 1921, just a few years later, it bought a second property, a 24 room Apartment Building on west 129th street, and it was called the casanova. Maybe is what they called it. In 1922 it remodeled its first acquisition that former convent and 100 30th and to transform it into the st. Luke hall. It became the new york st. Luke district headquarters. The harlem st. Lukes equivalent of more than a Million Dollars in modern dollars, to remodel the st. Luke call on 100 30th. Its a gleaming hall accommodated everything, all these events in the black community from pageants to Church Groups to international delegation, to union meetings. And in 1924 the order further added to its holdings by purchasing a third property, a combination Apartment Building, restaurant, retail store on w. 139th st. , ninth street, which wasnt too far from skies are shrill. So st. Lukes three properties stood as these brick, granite and steel monument to black economic progress located in the heart of harlem is black communities burgeoning rolling a black communities. St. Lukes became an important center for business, for Community Activities and entertainment, and for the pastor First Emmanuel Church called out st. Luke call and the place was bootlegging, bold prostitution and cabarets belie its saintly name. And frederick, the pastor of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church and the adoptive father of harlem renaissance poet called st. Luke call nothing less than one of the quote hellholes of god. It was very likely that in the restaurant, the stores and Office Spaces in st. Lukes all and its apartments held great parties to help make ends meet and the rain numbers games, which was extralegal but highly profitable lottery gambling game. Game. And its also very popular. Success in the business of leisure and living a scene required in both the form and the extralegal economies in harlem. In 1916 the heart of a st. Lukes is broke. In 1918 they form the st. Luke finance corporation. Within a few years, that Corporation Makes some ambitious and lucrative real estate investment, so that by 1929 in a little more than a decade, the new york st. Lukes went from being nearly 400 in debt to having more than 5 million, and that is a very conservative modern day dollars, having 5 million in properties. As the country slid towards economic decline by the end of the decade, for its failures to sell all the stock, left at undercapitalized, despite the fact it was generating more than 10,000 in annual profits, and that accounts come that equals about 150,000 in modern day dollars but they raise from reaching the spaces in the hall and the apartments in the building, and they used those revenues to provide jobs for admittedly hoppity workforce of nearly two dozen employees but also to fund its public commitment such as providing charitable assistance to nearly 500 harlem families. Let me stop you for just a moment. These concerns ace affordable equality housing, of restaurants, retail spaces that offered fair prices and a variety of goods and services, good paying stable jobs, respectable, not so respectable, amusement and leisure activities. These were really important priorities for black women in particular, and black communities in general. These were the central social, economic and i would add political concern that animated those women who were leaving the st. Luke finance corporation. The district ended up raising the equivalent of about 1. 2 million in modern day dollars from a bond offering. The incredible amount of money they were able to raise really highlights the democratization of investing among black communities. Let me say that another way. It really demonstrates the ways that investing was popular and accessible for most African Americans, and it also revealed a commitment to the working and middle classes, their commitment to selfhelp. And making of freedom, i really highlight black peoples participation in investment and even some get rich quick schemes that really made the 1924. I have to say, 1. 2 million, i mean, thousand dollars loans and the Swanky Affairs cannot explain a lease on the own the dramatic rise in the harlem st. Luke fortunes. And im not that large but also reveal extralegal creative financing. By the interest of time im not going to go into detail here but i do delve into those creative financial schemes that the ladies of the finance corporations experimented with to raise these impressive psalms in such a short amount of time. The countries economic downturn couples with past investigations into organizations like Marcus Garvey and universe Negro Improvement Association finances really left the creative financial scheme of all kinds of black fraternal and other kinds of organizations which included of course the independent order of st. Luke vulnerable to state scrutiny, and thats exactly what happened. In 1928 the new York State Attorney general began an investigation into the order, and after just two hearings the court determine that the order was insolvent. It appointed a receiver and ordered the district to sell its real estate holdings. So just as i imagine at the beginning of my talk how Charity Jones, and this is an actual picture of Charity Jones, and Lulu Robinsonjones, the only picture i have of her, might have felt moving to and through new york city, i could only ponder how they mustve must ht when their beloved order lost its crown jewels. Jerry jones must have felt particularly bereft at the losses because she lost her home. She lived in one of the model apartments in the st. Luke hall, the First Property purchased. From her will i know she died in 1829 and she still resided at 127 west 100 30th street. But it was no longer the glorious st. Luke hall. That had to be bittersweet. Lulu robinsonjones told the census taker in 1930 that she was not working, that she was unemployed. Its that could have acted she stayed in st. Luke, but its very likely she never again held such a powerful position in a multimillion dollar concern. So what . So i hope that come as a close, by illuminating his story, fascinating story, about the rise in the fall of the st. Lukes bank in banking on freedom on which the story about the st. Luke finance corporation is a part, i try to connect these major developments in u. S. History. Im talking about reconstruction, the gilded age, the great migration, world war i, the new negro era. Im trying to recover the important and active role that black women played in the development of modern American Finance capitalism. And what i have acknowledged the competition contributions black women made the modern capitalism, i cannot ignore the exploitative aspects of capitalism or the destructive ways that the political economy severely limited black womens opportunities. So looking at the st. Luke finance corporation as a kind of case study we see investment as a form of community and institution building, also a protest and resistance that stand alongside of the kind of demands for economic justice, like the labor strike or the boycott. When powerful, black women as creditors, as debtors, as consumers, as owners of stock, insurance policyholders, they really tried to transform racial capitalism through a Woman Centered kind of articulation of black economic selfdetermination. I have to mention where i got the title. I dont have the last slide up. I hope that you are familiar with the numbers game that was so popular in black communities from late 19th century to the late 1970s, and a pretty basic version of this playing the numbers involved facing a bet on this kind of three number combination. If your number hit you could turn a tiny investment of a Little Pocket change into a couple hundred dollars. A veritable industry kind of arises out of this really popular numbers game, so people so lucky charms. You have lucky objects and charms. You have spiritualists who can help you predict your lucky number if you also have these things called dream books. This is how i dream book works. Say you have a dream about a dog. You can look in the dream book and you can find a three number combination attached to that dog. It could be a yellow dog and maybe you could look up yellow and you would find three numbers associated with yellow, and you would try playing these numbers to win. One dream book from the 20s and the 30s offered this explanation under people who dreamed about colored people. The dream book said, quote, this is an excellent dream for all. Promises riches and extraordinary good health to those in business great success, to prisoners a speedy release, the farmers great cop to the brokenhearted courage. So i borrowed the title from this green Book Description about colored people because i imagine that women of the st. Luke finance corporation were dreaming of the african community, africanamerican community, at that they felt it was really an excellent dream for all perks of thank you all so much for your attention and for the time. Thank you for inviting me its our pleasure. Thank you so much, shennette. That was great. I cant let you escape with a talk about the woman who endorsed the cover of your book, Maggie Lena Walker. Can you tell the audience, its amazing, her circumstances, she was born and raised and what she accomplished, particularly commits her place if you want to learn more about her, a physical place you might be able to visit . And lastly, on a more sober note, what would she say about whats going on in the sky today . Because she is such a focal point of the book and so fascinating. Yes. I was telling david and system which we try to have little objectivity with our subjects, but it is hard not to be so impressed when Maggie Lena Walker, Maggie Lena Walker was born, enslaved by at the end of the civil war in richmond, virginia. She said herself as she grew up not with a silver spoon in her mouth but with the a wash baskp on her head. She grew up poor but her circumstances in her life really i think shaped her vision, her Economic Vision for black women in particular. She of course was simply involved with independent board of st. Lukes. She became its president as a young woman in 1899, and she really transformed that organization. It was on its last legs in 1899 when she took over and she communicated this vision where she won to open up a store and a factory. They never able to open the factory at the bank. In 1903 she succeeded and she opened the st. Luke Penny Savings Bank in 1903 which was the first bank to be led by a black woman and also to be largely financed by africanamerican women. She is also very active politically, socially all around the country. If you want to know more about her, other than in my book, there actually is really great article that just came out a a couple weeks ago in the wall street journal which focuses on raising women in the present day in banking, and it kind of harkens back to the start of Maggie Lena Walker, the kind of understand this phenomenon of women in banking. If you are ever in richmond, her house, she had a beautiful mansion that she owned in richmond, and the National Park service runs her house. You could also go online and you can do a virtual tour. There are many images of objects inhouse and also of her and various businesses and kind of black life in richmond. And then just finally i think that Maggie Lena Walker would have a lot to say about the events that are going on today. In fact, i think that in the midst of covid she would have a lot to say about kind of revising with the kind of work she would be able to do at st. Lukes bank as well as independent board of st. Lukes insurance company. She always talked about a black womans weight of banking and i think we learn a lot about way of making banking that is attuned to the practical need of the community that it served, that it centers them. In the pandemic, for example, she would argue about using sounds, lending criteria but kind of erasing some of the structural institutional inequalities that are inherent in things like credit scores. So to look at other multiple other kind of sources to fit peoples credit worthiness, small investments especially like business what we think of microfinance today. Those are the kinds of things i think if she were here today she would look around and i think she would be ready to kind of raised up her shoulders, roll up her your sleeves and really put her shoulder into kind of transforming, really shrinking the racial wealth gap, which is what she tried to do in 1903 and that is definitely what should be trying to do in 2020. Thanks so much. Such Great Stories that have really mean today. Its really incredible. We have a question from professor george robb and hes asking, do you know whether any st. Lukes counsels in northern cities tried to organize similar financial experiments . Yes, they do. I know that in philadelphia and some of the largest were harlem, philadelphia and d. C. , washington, d. C. And i know that in washington, d. C. They actually tried to do something very similar. They tried to build up st. Lukes hall, and richmond was the model, i finance corporation that could raise the funds needed to invest in these real estate ventures. They tried to do that in d. C. Its, im sure its an interesting story. Definite in philadelphia d. C. I also would say also just in rural areas as well, particularly in the south, but im not as familiar with the north, that even on a small scale you had women raise thousands of dollars to build small brick or wood buildings that they called their st. Lukes headquarters. Some places, i think theres one in lynchburg, virginia, and some other small towns especially throughout virginia africanamerican women were able to do this also on a smaller scale. The next question comes from professor chatterjee, good friend at Gabelli School. He wants to know why do these banks and institutions disappear and how many if any are still around . So before the great, before the 1930s there were over 100 africanamerican banks that had been formed between 1888 1888 n the very first one was chartered in richmond, which is coming up as the cradle of black capitalism, but even on the eve of the Great Depression, these banks, part of the reason they disappeared had to do with many factors. Many of them could be attributed to structural racism. So you had these banks were often limited. They were limited in where they can operate. They of course focused largely on africanamericans who tended to make less money, and they had difficulty accessing credit. Also the banking knowledge that other banks were able to get. But i do want to say that even though these were crippling or very difficult, trying circumstances under which to try to make a banking venture go, africanamericans did innovate ways to try to overcome those barriers. There was the National NegroBankers Association that was first formed in 1907 revived again in the 1920s. They would send people read some Banking Experience out in the country tried to share what knowledge they had with these banks. But often these banks were targeted by the kind of new banking regulations that would come up so that on one hand they seen very neutral, but they were really used often as a cudgel by the state to really wipe the sense of black economic progress off the mat. And then of course like of the banks and other Financial Institutions, they just simply could not whether the storm of the Great Depression. So hobbling through an out of the Great Depression there were about a dozen banks, but again there was a revival, especially around world war i and the 50s in the number of black banks. I never of black banks changes all the time. There is a movement of the sort called bank black which encourage all people to invest, to deposit 100 in a black bank in order to build them up. So that is hashtag bank black pictures also a website. I probably could look it up. I think it is blank dash bank black usa here you could can sh for them by your area code or part of the country you are in and it includes both online and brickandmortar banks. We do have a handful of banks that are more than 100 years old that are still in existence today. Really excellent, wonderful. So i have a comment and a question from caitlin rose kennedy, and she indicates she is a huge fan of your writing and lecturing skills. And the question is about the ideas of racial uplift and if they tied into the running of st. Lukes. For example, did it ever bar certain groups considered to be unfit representatives of the race like poor unwed black women . Did it ever bar them participating in finance capitalism . And i love and appreciate caitlin, too. Former student. Yes, definitely respectability politics played a role in black finance and in black capitalism, but not necessarily in restricting people who might have been considered unrespectable from participating in these kind of financial uplift activities. In fact, Maggie Lena Walker herself was the product of rape. I think i can convincingly argue that. She of course was surrounded by communities of women who had been subjected to racial, Sexual Violence. So being an unwed mother, for example, wasnt was it necessat would cast you out of the realm of respectability and also Maggie Lena Walker was seen as financial independent, Economic Literacy as a path forward. Because these women had to take care of families and also were important, their roles in the community in terms of the philanthropy and their work in churches and their activism. There was a point where she was a little oldfashioned so the younger women, who were able to take advantage, this Younger Generation of women who were able to take advantage of the opportunities, women like that first generation out of slavery, women like Magdalena Walker and hers to provide the Younger Generation to chafed under the restrictions, they didnt want a prayer devotional every day before work, they wanted the latest fashion, and they wanted to go to movies, listen to jazz music. So there is a kind of a politics of respectability which i think generationally about what the older generation of africanamerican women, who are trying to provide these opportunities for the Younger Generation, and the Younger Generation of women who are taking advantage of those opportunities, but are not but wanted to kind of do things their own way. Our next question. I wanted to amplify from a couple of questions ago, you write on the state Bank Examiners and how horrible they were to these banks and the North Carolina case, theyre bragging about how they can go about and shut these banks down. So its awful. Our next question, laura ritter house thanks you and she wants to know to the extend that black or white men or black or white women invested in st. Lukes . Its hard to tell. But definitely Magdalena Walker was really skilled in building interracial coalition. I mean, there were some things that she knew that she needed help with from the White Community of richmond to accomplish her vision and her goals. And so, in terms of investment, there probably were, just like the friedmans bank, there were probably some whites who did either have a small account in the bank or, you know, perhaps may have bought a couple of, you know, stocks in the bank in order to show that they were progressive and supportive of these kinds of efforts for black progress, but black banks, not just st. Luke, but many black Financial Institutions insurance and black banks, really tried to make a point that these were largely blackcontrolled efforts uplifting the community, and they really made appeals to race pride. Some of them talked about and really stressed that they were able to, you know, accomplish the things that they were able to accomplish without white assistance or use of their services. So its a complex question. So on the one hand, you have whites who probably as a show of support, you know, did participate minimally in actual investment in these organizatio organizations, but africanamericans at the same time were really stressing that they didnt really need or require whites participation to really showcase these, you know, these organizations for progress and i also just want to say, too, that, you know, economic growth, business, is an area where you could get by in from a broad, you know, swath of white. So from radical to moderates, so there were people who could be staunchly segregationist, who could support the idea of a separate black economy and then you could have more liberal or moderate people, whites, who could also support a black separate economy. So, again, the idea about race and whites participation and also their conceptions of the place of black business and a black separate economy, on the one hand can be they can have some progressive ideas, but they can also have some really regressive ideas as well. We have a question from lee sh sha, who do wii build black wealth today and what do we learn from the women in harlem that could help us today. How do we build wealth today . I could probably Say Something thats not popular, reparation a serious hr40 would finally be debated and dealt with in congress. And that bill is to create a commission, you know, to study the question of reparations. Not just for slavery, but also for, you know, Racial Discrimination and inequities even beyond slavery. So, i think thats one important step forward in terms of kind of closing the wealth gap and Building Wealth today. And then again, like i said about Magdalena Walker, i also think that really embracing some parts of her vision and the kind of activities of these st. Luke women is a way to try to, you know, again build wealth. To try to really look at community concerns, Community Needs and to meet those needs, which of course, would take, say, raising large sums of money, but by centering the needs of the community that are articulated by the community, so this is not, say, for example, gentrificatiogentrific actually listening to people in the communities and giving them spaces in Different Industries and asking them what do you want . What do you need . And then crafting, you know, programs and tools to help them meet those needs and at the same time, also ripping chipping not chipping away, but really working to dismantle the kind of barriers that have stood in their place. So here i would i will mention, for example about lending and some people may say, well, these communities, theyre the value in those communities are just, you know, theyre not the same. Theyre declining or theyre falling. But you know, but thats not an accident. And so those banking those Financial Institutions in particular, those organizations, including realtors and appraisers and those groups that hope to create that situation need then to admit their complicity in creating these kind of pockets and these places where these kind of really stark inequalities exist and then after we can have an honest conversation of admitting complicity in that, then talk about, well then how can we now dismantle some of the practices and the narratives that we have had about the particular places and these ideas again about wealth and risk and opportunity and kind of re, you know, direct the conversation. Earlier you just mentioned the friedmans bank, attempt after the civil war. So im wondering if you could talk a little about that and you have a chapter, i am yet waiting, about a familys 46year sojourn trying for compensation and i dont think many people know about the friedmans bank and please educate us on that. Believe it or not my school is doing a test, so hopefully you hear the siren in the back so ill be sure to talk up a little bit loud. So the freemans bank was created after the civil war immediately after the civil war in 1865, and it lasted for nearly a decade to 1874. It was a bank that was formed to for the free people, for the formallien slaved. That was in the charter and it was one of the banks that were formed by the federal chartered by the federal government. So we have first bank of the United States. The second bank of the United States and the freemans bank and they used a board of all White Trustees because they didnt trust africanamericans to kind of know how to direct their Financial Futures and there was kind of a change in the bank that allowed it to be its immense resources of a billion dollars circulated in this bank in terms of in modern day dollars in the decades, the near decade that it operated and through that corruption of the White Trustees and other people connected to the bank, like the koch brothers, financiers in new york, it led to the doe mice of the bank and africanamericans lost millions of dollars of their deposits. And so thats the common story. I just want to say in my book, i really try to, you know, look at how africanamericans use the bank, especially black women. How they, you know, kind of subverted some of the plans and visions that limited Economic Vision of these White Trustees to bend the bank to meet their needs and then i also really point out that two things, two points i really make about the bank is that one, that black women, black with people never abandoned their own economic networks, that they had forged, you know, through slavery and after. They just, you know, they just put the freemans bank within that network and the second thing that even though the failure of the bank was devastating, not just devastating to black wealth, but also just devastating for people to lose as a sinl symbol of progress and citizenship and opportunity and freedom for them to lose that bank, it convinced them that they needed to control their own, you know, financial institution. And so, the kind of bittersweet, or the upside, as there is one, of the closing of the freemans bank, is that i think it really jump started the black Banking Movement with the First Charter Bank in 1888. So we have one one final question that we have time for and its by Nancy Wheeler and i love the question. She thanks you and she thanks you for elevating early black women in finance ap we and we all want to know other than handing out copies of your book on the corner, how else can we educate people about these amazing women . There is the her house, the National Park service has a wonderful video that it shows in the museum that you can access on youtube so you can learn more about it and i also think that pbs documentary, its called boss. The black experience in business is a start. Its two hours long, but also, im in that documentary and i can tell you, i talked for three hours. Theres so much on the cutting room floor that im hoping that the producer, stanley nelson, you know, it could be like a series, but its a quick primer into a history of africanamerican, you know, business and wealth building. So that document boss, the black experience in business, which is available for streaming for pbs is important as well and then of course, there also is so many other books. I will be sure to send a link. Im a part of the Business History conference, which is an international Business History organization and we they actually have created this incredible list that highlights minority business and so, it includes a lot of work about africanamerican businesses that i have contributed there. So thr all kind there are all kinds of books and articles as well and ill be sure to send that link. Thanks so much. Thank you. Now, on behalf of all of us at the museum. Cfa and cabelli, we learned a lot from you and well hear more from you. Thank you. Thank you. Book tv on cspan2 has top authors and from the recent southern festival of books, authors marsh, burton and winkler reflect on life in appalachia. And boyd and pilgrim discuss the era in the south. And new yorker staff writer discusses his book, joe biden, the life, the runs, and what motors now. On sunday at 1 p. M. Eastern, from the southern festival of books, journalist matthew van meter talks about deep delta justice, reaffirmed a right to trial by jury in most criminal cases and author Stephanie Gorton and chris handby, Investigative Journalism and its role in democracy. And John Fabian Witt talks about american contagion epidemics ap the law, pr small pox to covid19. Hes interviewed by a georgetown professor. Watch this weekend on cspan2. Today senator angus king joins the policy center for a discussion and the role of technology on the pandemic. Live eastern on cspan2. Thanks for joining you gos, my name is alex meriweather. And behalf of Harvard Bookstore im pleased to introduce tonights talk with thomas levenson, his new book money for nothing, the scientists, fraudsters, reinvented money,