Banking on Freedom
Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal
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- £29.99
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- £29.99
Publisher Description
Between 1888 and 1930, African Americans opened more than a hundred banks and thousands of other financial institutions. In Banking on Freedom, Shennette Garrett-Scott explores this rich period of black financial innovation and its transformative impact on U.S. capitalism through the story of the St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women.
Banking on Freedom offers an unparalleled account of how black women carved out economic, social, and political power in contexts shaped by sexism, white supremacy, and capitalist exploitation. Garrett-Scott chronicles both the bank’s success and the challenges this success wrought, including extralegal violence and aggressive oversight from state actors who saw black economic autonomy as a threat to both democratic capitalism and the social order. The teller cage and boardroom became sites of activism and resistance as the leadership of president Maggie Lena Walker and other women board members kept the bank grounded in meeting the needs of working-class black women. The first book to center black women’s engagement with the elite sectors of banking, finance, and insurance, Banking on Freedom reveals the ways gender, race, and class shaped the meanings of wealth and risk in U.S. capitalism and society.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her first book, Garrett-Scott, assistant professor of history and African-American studies at the University of Mississippi, expertly explores the financial lives of black women from just before the Civil War to the beginning of the New Deal. She traces the women's involvement as owners, employees, and customers in organizations ranging from formal banks to burial organizations, mutual aid groups, and secret societies. Garrett-Scott argues that women "played essential roles in blacks' efforts to use finance to carve out possibilities within U.S. capitalism and society" and, in the process, "forged their own definitions of economic opportunity and citizenship." Garrett-Scott highlights institutions including the Freedman's Bank, a short-lived post Civil War bank created to help freed slaves and black veterans, and the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank opened in Richmond, Va., by powerful businesswoman Maggie Lena Walker to give black Americans access to loans and protection from the racism encountered in other banks. Garrett-Scott also explores how, in the 20th century, banks in general presented opportunities for black women to work in finance. This recovery of one aspect of black women's history will appeal to scholars as well as those with a serious interest in the history of finance and women's history. Illus.
