Your television provider. Welcome back to our centennial speaker series. Thank you for joining us for today its event featuring doctor shen that garrett scotch. If this is your first time joining us my name is donna and i have the honor of the school of business. 2020 marks a very special year for the Gabelli School. It is our hundred anniversary and we are celebrating 100 years of purpose driven bridge while business education. Since our inception we believed in the power of partnership to inform and lead change. I would very much like to thank the Gabelli Center for Global Security analysis and our wonderful partners, the museum of American Finance and the cfa society of new york who is cosponsoring todays conversation. One of the goals of the centennial series is to shine the light on the important history plays in shaping the future. In her latest book, banking on freedom, black freedom and u. S. Finance before the new deal, she explores a rich period of 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 president and ceo of the museum of American Finance will introduce doctor shennette garrettscott. Then she will discuss her book, banking on freedom heard following this discussion david and i will facilitate audience questions. We ask the type your questions in the q a section near the bottom of the zoom screen. Im also very excited to share as a participant at todays webinar you will be entered into a raffle to win a free ecopy of the book banking on freedom. Winners will be notified be the end of the week. And finally before i turn it over to david to do a formal introduction, i do want to remind everyone that both the Gabelli School depend on your Financial Support for their mission part i would 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. Sue and thanks don its always great to back with you in the ford home and our friends today are speaker today received our her phd for the university of texas. Shes currently at the university of mississippi. Under research and writing she brings race gender and capitalism for the Research Behind this book is incredible. There are 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 association for the best book in southern economic history. He is also on the shortlist for the haggling prize for the best book in Business History in 2020. Now, friend of the museum and former speaker in this lecture series are george roberson, it is quote unquote innovative and pathbreaking as well as beautifully written and deeply researched. Now shennette garrettscott can turn a phrase that searchlight with the dedication which i really like to my when malcolm dominique and my wings jemison. That given the social climate in the country today this book is timely in understanding the deepseated issues of inclusion and participation within the Free Enterprise capitalist system. Details about banking on freedom and the amazing story of Maggie Lee Walker who said about herself that she was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth, but rather a Laundry Basket on her head. It is shennette garrettscott, welcome. Guest thank you so much david for that wonderful introduction. In thank you for kristen for inviting me and everyone who made this possible. I went to share my screen and the slide. We will go ahead and get starte started. I also appreciate people taking the time out of their busy schedules to spend 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 19209 stock market crash. Also one by use it to explore how black women use Financial Institutions like the st. Lukes finance corporation they lead and controlled to challenge the constraint of jim crow, sexism and economic exploitation. They use Companies Like the sl fc to carve out possibilities for themselves in the u. S. Economy and society. They understood their emotions and ideas about wealth and value and risk were shaped by gender and by race and place in the economic ladder. But they were not simply defined by these factors and processes. They took an active role in shaping the meaning of wealth and risk and opportunity. And certainly acknowledge the limitations they face because of erased gender and their class, i also really want to demonstrate how black women defined their values in ways that often counter to the kinds of messages they received about their worth as citizens and economic actors. Not just in black communities but in the larger u. S. Economy. We should have a good amount of time left for questions and answers. I think the best way to really understand the st. Lukes finance corporation is due to women who are vitally important to the venture. Thats Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones. In the next slide youll see two images. They are not charity lulu, i only have about three pictures total of those two women. But the anonymous women in those images capture their spirits. Ill start by imagining their early lives in new york to understand the kinds of challenges that black women fac face. And then i will briefly describe the independent order on how the Harlem Branch of the order formed the corporation. And then i will talk about the successes and challenges that they face. Especially finance Corporation Board which was comprised almost totally of women. So lets get started. Charity. Charity hesitated a moment before she stepped onto the dusty dirt streets. What am i doing she thought to herself . Suspended and the streetcar door between her old life that lay behind her and this awful new place. The smell, the noise, the people, all of the people, so many moving, pressing, buzzing now like flies rising from the piles of horse manure in the streets. This was 1885. Ed charity pause for a while the mostly empty seat of the streetcar can egg. She glanced back. What would she return to . Eight dead babies and two handfuls of years . All of them taken from her. One who never took to her breast, and another who managed to toddle a few steps. Literally there is no 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 handprints, the babies breath misting and curling off the streetcar windows. Eight dead babies calling her back home. Lulu, lulu hesitated. A moment before she stepped onto the wooden floor or in slick by of dancers, black men with even blacker burke cork basis. We stage lights homes the people murmured, pressed tightly together in the hardwood and theater seats. It was like a sudden rush of wind wishing and jostling leaves. Now this was harlem 1916. And lulu pause for a moment suspended between the noisy backstage goings on in the expectant audience just be on the lip of the thick velvet curtain. She eyed at center stage a pocket she could pour her voice into. So lulu drew in her breath and planted her feet on the expectant floor. And as she stepped into the spotlight, darkness while side of the stage where she had stood only a moment ago. She dared not look back old and onto silence. So Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones was her daughterinlaw had very different experiences as Migrant Women who moved to you new york city in the late 19th an early 20th century. But they did share some important things in common they shared of course charities only surviving child, a son. But 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, defined excitement in the big cities of the north. So these two women also shared a devotion to the independent sort order of saint luke. This was a secret society that was step founded in the 1850s by a free black woman. In 1899 the independent order of st. Lukes under the leadership under the ambitious maggie lena walker. With headquarters in richmond, saint luke would become one of the most successful lack controlled in one of the very few largely black women controlled Financial Institutions in the country. At its peak in the mid 1920s the order ran a bank and an Insurance Company operated a newspaper. It boasted 100,000 members in more than 20 states. It employed nearly 200 people the overwhelming majority of them women. And it possessed assets that were equivalent to about 31 million in modernday dollars. In one important venture that brought the independent order of st. Lukes both renowned scandal involved Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones. That was the saint luke finance corporation. Headquartered in harlem and organized in the late 19th by the North District of the independent order of st. Lukes. The st. Lukes finance corporation reflects the opportunity that open for women and u. S. Finance by the 1920s. It was a complex tapestry made up of thousands, thousands of black controlled Financial Institutions. These include formal banks and Insurance Companies as well as thrift savings clubs industrial loan associations Credit Unions and even finance corporations. In this complex tapestry controlled millions of africanamerican dollars in expanded their dreams. The urban and northern part black population the boundaries of those dreams. So the strategy of the fight st. Lukes finance reflected some of these anxieties about black womens bodies in these new urban spaces. There were these conflicting tension that saw black women as a victim but also the sources of social order as both in need of financial protection but also new economic opportunities. Working womens demand stretch these Financial Institutions like the independent order of st. Lukes. They decided better Career Options and housing choices. They rejected these efforts to release their behavior on the way they spend their leisure time. These new negro women were attracted to the promises of investment as a vehicle specific inclusion, forte rights in a way to destroy and dismantle jim crow. They also grew really tired of these pictures that imply that men were the proper producers and consumers of these products. These markers of citizenship. The Financial Institution women met and control experiments with innovative ways to raise capita capital. They also struggled with experience in the problem of racial and sexual discriminatio discrimination. So my book of banking on freedom deals with a number of these were going to focus on the rise and fall of the st. Lukes finance corporation. So it is 1916 and the struggling new York District of st. Lukes which is headquartered in harlem elected a new president. His name is dennis grice. The harlan st. Lukes had 3 dollars and 45 cents in its coffers but was more than 400 in debt. Now he may have been the formal hand at the wheel but his Ambitious Group of women controlled. Twentyone members mostly Women Incorporated the st. Lukes finance corporation receptor sites on investments in real estate. So women made up six of the Seven Members of the finance corporations board. And Lulu Robinson jones was widowed by 1909 shared the advisory committee. So when harlan st. Lukes turned to Charity Jones to help recruit new members. And Charity Jones solidified her status. She is known as the mother of st. Lukes in new york. And so through her efforts, membership in the new York District sword in the midst of the great migration. I was not the joneses women charm alone that refueled a resurgent in the harlem st. Lukes numbers. They are square focus, laser focused on addressing the needs of black women. Let the spark that revived the order. So the new negro woman tested and expanded the boundaries of these organizations. They were this model of modern black womanhood. We have scholars at talk about the new negro women and they really stress their cultural and political importance. But economic concerns really placed high among their priorities. These women and their families desperately needed jobs and housing. And she understood this dilemma intimately i suspect. In the mid to late 19 teens, black women likely confronted limited Employment Opportunities as well as squalor housing conditions, over policing and overcrowding in segregated sections of the city. So Roberson Jones and the other women of the Advisory Board were able to borrow 3000 in the st. Lukes bank in richmond. The bank is very cautious, the finance committee would like to be unwilling to invest more in the real estate scheme or they were just unable to do so. Because investment in new york real estate, even then required substantial capital. On this 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 Roberson Jones envisioned this new and returning members as potential investors. And opera singer of summer noun, she also understood the business of leisure in harlem. She arranged these Fundraising Affairs that combine entertainment and enterprise. For example she organize this fundraising perception at the manhattan casino and had a very famous for straw for music. So in just a few months the harlem st. Lukes raised enough money to secure a mortgage on the building. I purchased a former convent on west 130th street in 19201 just a few years later bought a second property, a 24 room Apartment Building on west 129th street. It is called the casanova is what they called it. In 19202 remodel its first acquisition that former convent on 130th and it transformed it into the st. Lukes hall. It became the new york st. Lukes district headquarter headquarters. Spent the equivalent to more than a Million Dollars in modern dollars. Two remodel the st. Lukes hall on 130th. This hall accommodated everything in the black community from pageant to Church Groups to International Delegations to union meetings. And in 19204 the order further added to its holdings by purchasing a third property. A combination Apartment Building, restaurant and retail store on west 139th street. It was not used far from strivers wrote. But st. Lukes three properties stood as these brick, granite, and steel monuments to black economic progress. Located in the heart of harlems black community this growing black community, st. Lukes hall became an important center for business, for Community Activities and entertainment. And for vice parade the pastor First Immanuel Church called out st. Lukes hall as the place were bootlegging and prostitution. And cabarets belie its saintly name. And Frederick Asbury collins the pastor of salient Methodist Episcopal Church and father of renaissance polish called st. Lukes home. Nothing less hellhole of god. It was very likely that tenant in the restaurants, stores, the Office Spaces in st. Lukes hall and apartments held parties, to help make and meet and they ran numbers game which was illegal but highly profitable lottery gambling game. It was also very popular. Excess in the business of leisure and living it seemed required a foot in both the formal and the extralegal economies in harlem. So lets recount. In 1916 the harlem st. Lukes are broke. In 1918, they form the st. Lukes finance corporation. Within a few years that Corporation Makes them ambitious and lucrative real estate investments. So that by 19209, and a little more than a decade, the new york st. Lukes went from being nearly 400 in debt to having more than 5 million. That is a very conservative modernday dollars. Having 5 million in property. So as the country slid towards economic decline by the end of the decade for failure to sell all of the Corporation Stock left it undercapitalized. Despite the fact it was generating or than 10,000 dollars in annual profits. That equals too about 150,000 in modernday dollars that they raise from the spaces in the hall and the apartments in the building. The order used those revenues to provide jobs for admittedly a topheavy workforce of nearly two dozen employees. But also to fund its public commitment by providing charitable assistance to nearly 500 harlem families. To let me stress