Thank you for joining us for todays events. Featuring doctors. This is your first time joining us, my i have the honor of serving as the dean of the school of business. 2020 marks a very special year for this school. Its our 100th anniversary were celebrating 100 years purpose driven business education. Since our inception, we believed in the power of partnership to inform and lead change. So very much would like to thank the cavalli center for Global Security analysis and her wonderful partners, the museum of American Finance and cfa society of new york. Is cosponsoring todays conversation. One of the goals of this centennial series is to shine the light on the important history place in shaping the future. In the latest book, thanking unfreedom, black woman in u. S. Finance and for the new deal, she explores rich. Of financial innovation and his Transformative Impact on u. S. Capitalism. Todays session will take place in three parts. First, my colleague and friend, david, president and ceo of the museum of American Finance will introduce doctor garrett scott. Then she will discuss her book thanking unfreedom, following this discussion david and i will facilitate audience questions. We ask that you type your questions in the q a section near the bottom of the zoom screen. I am 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, thanking unfreedom. In the will be notified by the end of the week. And finally, before returning over to david, formal introduction, i do want to remind everyone that for this at school in the museum, they rely on your Financial Support to continue our mission. So i encourage you to take time to think about a donation to both of our outstanding organizations. Now i would like to turn it over to david. Thank you and its always great to be back with you and the friends that we have and of course all of us. In our speaker todays native texan received her phd at the university of texas, currently a professor at the university of mississippi. In her research and writing to bring to the floor issues of race gender and capitalism. The Research Behind his focus and credible. There are 400 are over 475 detailed footnotes. The book has received much praise including the organization of american historians, the association of black womens historians in the southern start association. In the best book in southern economic history. Also in the shortest for the highly prized for the best book in Business History in 2020. Now the friend of the museum and former speaker in this lecture series, george about this work, innovative, and beautifully written and deeply researched. Now the entire phrase, is the dedication which i really like reads to my wings, vincent. And given the social climate in the country today, this focus highly understanding about the deepseated issues of inclusion and participation but in the Free Enterprise capitalist system. It tells about banking on training and the amazing story is that about yourself, that she was not born with a silver spoon in her mouth. A rather hundred basket overhead. Here she is. Welcome. Thank you so much for the wonderful introduction. Shennette garrettscott. Thank you for inviting me and for everyone to make this possible. So im going to share my screen in the slides we will go ahead and get started. Sorry also appreciate people taking the timeout of their busy schedules to spend learning more about black womens contributions to the u. S. Finance. So today, i will talk for about 35 minutes rain and i will talk about the world of black finance in harlem before the 1929 stock market crash. I focus on one company. I use it to explore help elect women used Financial Institutions like the st. Louis financial corporation, institutions they lead and control of to challenge the constraints of jim crow, sexism and economic exploitations. They used companies to collect possibilities for themselves and he was economy and society. Understood that the motions and ideas about wealth and value risk, was shaped by gender and by race in place in the economic ladder. But they were not simply designed by these factors. In the processes. They took connective role in shaping the meaning of wealth and risk and opportunity. And molly acknowledge the limitations they faced because of the race and gender in the class, i also really want to demonstrate a black woman to find the real use in ways that often they would encounter the types of messages that they received about their worth as citizens and economic actors. Not just in the black communities but also in the order u. S. Economies. They have a good amount of time left for questions and answers. So i think the best way to really understand the finance corporations is through two women who were vitally important. Charity jones and Lindsay Robinson jones. Assuming the next slide, you will see two images. And i only have about three pictures total of those two women. These anonymous women was as images capture their spirits. So i will start by imagining their early lives in new york. I understand the kinds of challenges that black women faced. Then i will briefly describe the order and st. Lukes and how the ranch of your her formed this corporation and then i will talk about the challenges that they faced especially finance corporations part of which was comprised almost totally woman. So lets get started. Charity. Charity has a moment before she stepped onto the dusty dirt street. What am i doing here, she thought to herself. She was suspended in the place between her old life that lay behind her than this only place. The smell, the noise, the people. Oh the people. So any amazing and buzzing people like clydes rising from horse manure in the streets. This was 1885. Back in virginia. So charity drew and her breath and planted her feet on the unforgiving ground. She dared not look back at the tiny handprint, the babys breath missing and curling off of the streetcar window. Eight dead babies calling her back home. Lulu hesitated, a moment before she stepped onto the wooden floor, worn slick by hundreds of dancers, black men with black or burke cork faces figure stage life hound people pressed tightly together and the hardwood and theater seats. I found it like the sudden rush of wind whooshing and jostling leaves. Now this was harlem. 1916 and lulu pause for a momen moment. For the backstage goings on in the expectant audience just be on the thick velvet curtain. Shied the quiet place 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. She stepped into the spotlight darkness swallowed up the side of the stage where she had stood only a moment ago. She dared not look back at the emptiness that holding onto silence. Though Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones with her daughterinlaw. Had very different experiences as Migrant Women who moved to new york city in the late 19th an early 20th century bird they shared some important things in common. They shared of course charitys only 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. To find excitement in the big cities of the north. So these two women also shared a devotion to the independent order of saint luke. This was a secret society that was founded in the 1850s by a free black woman for black wome women. In 1899 the independent order of st. Lukes came under the leadership of the ambitious Maggie Lena Walker. Its headquarters in richmond, saint 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. In the peak in the mid 1920s the order ran a bank and an 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 women. And it possessed assets for theres equivalent to about 31 million in modernday dollars. No one important venture that brought the independent order of saint luke both renowned and scandal involved Charity Jones and Lulu Robinson jones. And that was the saint luke finance corporation. Headquartered in harlem and organized in the late 19 by the new York District of the independent order of st. Lukes. The saint luke finance corporation reflects the opportunities that open for women and u. S. Finance by the 1920s. There is a complex tapestry made up of thousands, thousands of black controlled Financial Institutions. These included formal banks and Insurance Companies as well as thrift savings clubs, industrial loan associations, Credit Unions and even finance corporations. This complex tapestry controlled millions of africanamericans in dollars. At expanded the values of their dreams. During the great migration, the first great gratian around world war i however the increase in the urban and northern black population had the capacity of these Financial Institutions. So revealed the tapestry is frayed and worn in places. And the boundaries of those fixed. So the strategies the saint luke finance corporation chose to promote reflected some of these anxieties about black womens bodies in these new urban space spaces. And there were these conflicting tensions that saw black women as both the victim, but also the sources of social disorder. And both in need of financial protection. But also new economic opportunities. So working women stretch like the independent order of st. Lukes. They desired better Career Options and housing choices. They rejected these efforts to police their behavior and the way they spend their leisure time. And these have eco new negro women were attracted to the promises of investment as a vehicle for inclusion for political rights. And a way to destroy and dismantle jim crow. They also grew really tired of these pictures that implied that men were the proper producers and consumers of these investment products. These markers of citizenship. The Financial Institutions that women lead and controlled experimented with innovative ways to raise capital. They also released record with experience with of course the intractable problem of racial and sexual discrimination. So my banking on freedom deals with the number of sorts of tensions. Here are going to focus on the rise and the fall of the saint luke finance corporation. So it is 1916 and the struggling new York District of st. Lukes which was headquartered in harlem had elected a new president. His name is dennis grice. The harlem st. Lukes had 3. 45 in its coffers. But was more than 400 in debt. Now grice may have been the formal hand at the wheel but an Ambition Group of women controlled. So in 1981, 21 members, most of them Women Incorporated the saint luke finance corporation. And they set their sights on investments in real estate. So women made up six of the Seven Members of the finance corporations board. I Lulu Robinson jones who is widowed by 1909 shared the advisory committee. So the revised harlem st. Lukes turned to Charity Jones to help them recruit new members. And Charity Jones solidified her status. She was known as the mother of saint luke in new york. And through her efforts, membership in the new York District sword in the mix of the great migration. Now it was not the joneses womens charm alone that fueled a resurgence in the harlem numbers. They are square focus their laser focus on addressing the need black women, lit the spark revived the order. The new negro woman like i said before tested and expanded the boundaries of these organizations. They were a model of black women hood. We have scholars a talk with the new negro women. They stress their cultural and political importance. But economic concerns really place high among their priorities. These women and their families desperately needed jobs and housing. And Robinson Jones understood this dilemma intimately i suspect. In the midtolate 19 teens, like many young black women she likely confronted limited Employment Opportunities as well as squalid Housing Conditions skyrocketing rent policing and overcrowding in segregated sections of the city. Roberson jones and the other women of the Advisory Board were able to borrow 3000 some Maggie Lena Walker in richmond, but the banks very cautious the finance committee was likely either unwilling to invest more in real estate schemes are unable to do so. In new York Real Estate even then required substantial capital. Those capital to mans we have to remember were compounded by the racial tariffs that made the cost of credit consideration higher for blacks and was for whites. This new and returning members as potential investors also understood the business of leisure in harlem she raised the Fundraising Affairs that combine entertainment as well as enterprise. She had a fundraising reception is the at the manhattan casino and had a very famous orchestra provided the music. They raised enough money to secure a mortgage on the building just a few years later about a Second Property a 24 room Apartment Building on west 129th street. It was called the casanova. Thats what they called it. In 19202 it remodeled its first acquisition that former convent on 130th. And transformed it into the saint luke hall. It became the new york st. Lukes district headquarters. In the harlem st. Lukes was the equivalent of more in a Million Dollars. So remodeled the saint luke hall on 130th. This hall accommodated everything, from pageant to Church Groups to International Delegations to union meetings. At a 19204 the order further added to his holdings by purchasing a third property. A combination Apartment Building restaurant and retail store on west 139th street which was not too far from stivers row. He st. Lukes three properties stood as the brick, granite and steel monuments to black economic progress. Located in the heart of harlem some black community the growing black community st. Lukes hall became an important center for business, for Community Activities and entertainment. And for vice. So the pastor of First Immanuel Church called out saint luke hall as the place was bootlegging and prostitution and cabarets belied it saintly name. On the pastor of Salem Methodist Episcopal Church and the adopted father of harlem poet counted columns called st. Lukes nothing less of the hellholes of god. It was very likely that tenants in the restaurants on the store and the Office Spaces in saint luke hall and the apartments held parties to help make ends meet. And they ran numbers game which wasnt extralegal but highly profitable lottery gambling game. I was also very popular. Success in the business of leisure and living it seems required a foot in both the formal and extralegal economy and 1916 the harlem st. Lukes 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 silly 400 in debt to having more than 5 million. That is a very conservative modernday dollars. Having 5 million in property. And so as the country slid towards economic decline by the end of the decade the boards failure to sell all of the corporations stock left it undercapitalized. Despite the fact it was generating more than 10,000 dollars in annual profits. Not equal too about 150,000 in modernday dollars. The race and renting the spaces in the hall, and the apartments in the building. The order used those revenue to provide jobs or admittedly a topheavy workforce of nearly two dozen employees. But also to fund its public commitment. Such as providing charitable assistance to 500 harlem families. So let me stressor for just a moment. Safe affordable quality housing of restaurant, retail spaces that offered fair prices in a variety of goods and services. Good paying stable jobs. Respectable and not so respectable amusement and leisure activity. These were really important priorities for black women in particular and black communities in general. These were the central, social, economic and i will add political concern that animated those women who were leading the saint luke finance corporation. So the district ended up raising the equivalent about one point to Million Dollars in modernday dollars from a bond offering. Now the incredible amount of money they were able to raise really highlight the democratization of investing among black communities. Limit said that another way. Its really demonstrating that your investing was popular and accessible for most a