Feb. 13, 2017 

Black Business Group, Black Banks Making Black History With Economic Justice
By Hazel Trice Edney

Michael Grant, National Bankers Association

Ron Busby, U. S. Black Chambers Inc.

Alden McDonald Jr., Liberty Bank

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – It is the number one reason that Black-owned businesses fail: Simply put – not enough money and not enough places to get it.

That’s why as America commemorates Black History Month, the US Black Chamber Inc. (USBC), an association of more than 122 Black chambers and 265,000 business owners, is escalating publicity on its partnership with historic, Black-owned Liberty Bank. Both entities are determined to break economic barriers that have historically oppressed Black people.

"Our history is full of trailblazers and pioneers that fought to build our community from the ground up. We owe it to them to sustain our community,” says Ron Busby, USBC president/CEO.

“The top three concerns facing Black entrepreneurs are access to capital, access to capital, and access to capital,” Busby says. “As the voice of Black business owners, our focus during Black History Month is to highlight the importance of economic sustainability in the Black community and the dire lack of funding facing Black businesses.”

The USBC has launched what it calls a “buy-Black, bank-Black initiative” as a solution to spur economic growth in the Black community.

“Bank-Black is the single most powerful economic movement currently taking place in Black America,” Busby says. “Now is the time to utilize our Black banks as more than a place to hold our money, but as a resource for securing capital.”

As a part of this initiative, a USBC Bank-Black Credit Card is being offered in partnership with New Orleans-based Liberty Bank, a historic institution and one of the leading banks of the National Bankers Association (NBA).

"Through our relationship with Liberty Bank, we can now provide access of up to $10,000 with an unsecured line of credit at an annual percentage rate of 9.96 percent and with a credit score as low as 570. We think this is game-changing in that it now provides the needed resources for African-Americans to be able to move our communities to sustainability," Busby says.

Black businesses have long suffered oppressive redlining by major national banks. Even the Small Business Administration has barely reached 3 percent in its loans to Black-owned businesses. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2014 that more than half of Black business owners do not apply for business loans when they need it because of fear of being turned down. According to a report by NewsOne Now, their "fear is justified" as "only 47 percent of Black business owners get the full amount they requested versus 76 percent of Whites."

The Wall Street Journal reported last year that national banks tilting toward major mortgages "means fewer loans for Blacks, Hispanics." This leaves Black-owned community banks to do what they have historically done - serve the underserved.

Despite the proven historic wrongs of government and corporate discrimination, NBA President Michael Grant says Black business owners must now find ways to rescue themselves.

“When it comes to the burden of proof of who is ultimately responsible for the economic survival of the Black community in America, I’m arguing that the burden of proof has shifted to the Black community itself,” Grant says. “It does not in any way remove the responsibility of government to be fair. It doesn’t remove the responsibility of corporate America to be fair and to treat Black consumers and their businesses with equity. But the burden of proof of who is ultimately going to save the Black community, I am arguing that this must be the Black community.”

Grant continues, “Even if it means our advocacy, supporting our own businesses, going to our leadership asking, ‘What are your plans for the economic survival of Black people in this country?’ the burden of proof has shifted to us. And this credit card, in no small way, says that we are accepting the burden of proof. We’re saying, ‘Okay, if our businesses are having a difficult time in majority banks getting access to credit, what can the Black banks do about it? How can we accept that burden? How can we step up and revive access to credit?’ That’s what this has done.”

Despite negative stereotypes, Grant points to the education and professionalism of African-Americans in business and in banking as what enables them to create their own economic strategies for survival.

For example, Liberty Bank President Alden J. McDonald, Jr., is the longest tenured African-American financial executive in the country. His nearly 45 years of experience in the banking industry was first established with his presidency of Liberty, which started with the bank’s founding in 1972. The bank’s website credits his “strategic vision and hard work” for the success of the bank. Assets have grown from $2 million in 1972 to more than $600 million currently.

“Our relationship and our partnership with the US Black Chamber is a partnership that will make certain that available credit is based on a level playing field,” says McDonald. “And one of the reasons why we feel the relationship with Liberty Bank is important is because Liberty Bank is very sensitive to the credit challenges of the community. And therefore, our underwriting standards are taken into consideration for the small business person.”

Grant stressed that Black-owned banks can strengthen the economy of the Black community while operating within a stringent regulatory environment.

“Our banks, like any bank, have to adhere to the regulators. We can’t get around that. What we can do is when you come to our banks, we can talk with you, we can take a little extra time with you. We can tell you where the flaws are in your business plan, we can tell you that if you don’t qualify for credit, then here are the things that you can do so that you can become credit worthy. But, the bottom line is that the burden of proof has shifted to the Black community and its leaders and its organizations,” he said.

Ultimately, money in Black-owned banks is a win for everyone, Busby concludes.

“We want African-Americans to have money in Black banks because we feel that Black banks historically provided the resources in Black communities. But, we’re taking it a step further, understanding that banks truly make the largest profits by providing loans and receiving fees,” he says. “And so we feel like this is a win, win, win. It’s a win for the Black bank, which has additional capital to lend. It’s a win for the individuals because they can now get capital at an affordable rate. And it’s a win for the community because the banks can now make the loans that homeowners and business owners need. The USBC takes great pride in commemorating Black History Month with a tribute that honors Black history and anticipates an even greater Black future.”

Feb. 12, 2017

To Be Equal 

Ninth Circuit Court's Refusal to Reinstate Headed to Supreme Court
Trump’s Travel Ban Betrays American Values
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Like many immigrants, we came to this country empty-handed. We believed in American democracy--that with hard work and the goodness of this country, we could share in and contribute to its blessings. We were blessed to raise our three sons in a nation where they were free to be themselves and follow their dreams. Our son, Humayun, had dreams of being a military lawyer. But he put those dreams aside the day he sacrificed his life to save his fellow soldiers…If it was up to Donald Trump, he never would have been in America.” — Khizr Khan, father of U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq, Democratic National Convention Address, July 28, 2016

As a Republican candidate running for the nation’s highest office, Donald Trump promised an enthusiastic crowd of supporters that in the wake of the San Bernardino, CA attack—a mass shooting perpetrated by an American citizen of Pakistani descent and his wife, a Pakistani national and lawful permanent resident—he would, as president, call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” It took only a week into his new administration for now-President Trump to make good on his campaign trail promise. With the easy stroke of a pen, and a messyrollout, President Trump summarily stopped an entire class of people from entering the country, throwing airports into chaos and confusion, sparking spontaneous protests, delaying or halting family reunions and disrupting the lives of lawful immigrants both within and outside our nation’s borders.

The “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry to the United States” executive order, along with two previous orders, triggered a blanket, targeted 90-day ban on all travelers from seven predominately Muslim countries— Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—all deemed terrorist hot-beds. The entry of any and all refugees was suspended for 120 days, including an indefinite ban on refugees from war-torn Syria, as Trump’s administration established “new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America." The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has refused to reinstate the ban, key parts of which were suspended by a district court judge.

The Administration has made clear its intention to appeal to the Supreme Court.

In the court of law, what is at stake here is defining what, if any, checks can be placed on the president’s authority to oversee and determine federal immigration policy. In the court of popular opinion, however, what is at stake here is how we define ourselves as a nation and how we will continue to define ourselves in the future and in the face of legitimate national security concerns.

Fear, fiction, alternative facts, reality and discrimination have no place in this critical discussion where lives hang in the balance on both sides of the debate.

By singling out majority-Muslim countries, the Trump administration has effectively created an unconstitutional, discriminatory religious preference in our immigration policy that also slams the doors shut on Muslims, while openings the doors and prioritizing the admissions of non-Muslim refugees—namely, Christians, who are fleeing their countries in response to religious persecution. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause forbids our government to establish an official religion or to officially prefer one religion over another religion. This order is, therefore, not based on core American values.

None of the perpetrators of major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil has come from any of the seven countries that are on the president’s executive order. In fact, the majority of attackers come from within our borders, with many national security and counterterrorism experts noting that the perpetrators of attacks on U.S. soil have primarily been U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents—who, incidentally, have not been from any of the seven countries on the ban list. As far as refugees are concerned, there have been no fatal terrorist attacks by refugees in this country for nearly 40 years. According to a Cato Institute study on immigration and terrorism, “all of the murders committed by foreign-born refugees in terrorist attacks were committed by those admitted prior to the 1980 act.” The Refugee Act of 1980 is described as the “modern, rigorous refugee-screening procedures currently in place.” This order is, therefore, not based on reality.

The executive order foments fear. The executive order foments hate and falsely justifies and legalizes discrimination. The executive order ignores the reality of migration and terrorism and puts American lives at risk by failing to address our very real issues and potentially unleashing anti-American sentiment around the globe that could very well translate into devastating attacks. We, as a nation, cannot and should not support discrimination of any kind, person or religion, because since our founding we have aspired to renounce discrimination. We have failed, but we have also struggled to remain true to the ideals woven into the DNA of America. Favoring one religion over the other and punishing entire countries by associating all her citizens with criminal intent flies in the face of our American ideals and the Constitution. Further, it’s a short slide from religious discrimination to racial discrimination. First they came for the Muslims, and you said—what? All people who abhor discrimination must speak up!

Feb. 12, 2017

By Charlene Crowell

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As 2017’s Black History observances unfold in communities across the country, new research on racial wealth gaps refutes the age-old advice for people of color to pull themselves up by their proverbial bootstraps. According to researchers at Demos and the Institute for Assets & Social Policy at Brandeis University, historical and systemic privileges afforded Whites and denied to Blacks are the true root causes.

The Asset Value of Whiteness: Understanding the Racial Wealth Gap, analyzed data from the 2013 Survey of Consumer Finances.  After examining individual differences by race in consumer spending habits, education, family structure, and employment, the report concluded that these factors are not “sufficient enough to erase a century of accumulated wealth.”

“For centuries, White households enjoyed wealth-building opportunities that were systematically denied to people of color,” said Any Traub, report co-author and Associate Director of Policy and Research at Demos. “When research shows that racial privilege now outweighs a fundamental key to economic mobility, like higher education, we must demand our policymakers acknowledge this problem and create policies that address structural inequity.”

The significance of these new findings must not be lost during the month set aside to observe Black History. As observances honor those whose sacrifices and dedication led to notable achievements, February should also be a time to rededicate ourselves to the battles not yet won.

Public policies of the past systemically advantaged Whites and allowed their families to create intergenerational wealth that now serves as a financial springboard for future generations.  New public policy reforms must be enacted to correct and replace the harms Blacks have faced as a result of our financial exclusion.

For example, a college education is often cited as an essential gateway to higher incomes and America’s middle class. Yet Blacks frequently pay the cost of higher education with a greater student loan indebtedness than their White counterparts.

“With less student loan debt to pay off over their working years, the typical White college graduate has a head start on building wealth compared to their Black peers,” states the report.

Independent findings from the Center for Responsible Lending support the new report. Today more than half of Black families with a college student borrow to pay for college. Further, on average Black college graduates owe $7,400 more on student loans than their White classmates.

When it comes to wages and employment, in 2012, the median full-time wage earned by Blacks was $621 per week compared while the median wage for Whites was $792 each week, the equivalent financial loss of $8,892 per year. When gender was added, Black women fared even worse and earned only 68 percent – or $28,005 of the $41,184 made by similar White males.

With smaller paychecks and fewer discretionary dollars in household budgets, it is little wonder that the report also found that the median White single parent has 2.2 times more wealth than the median Black two-parent household, and 1.9 times more wealth than the median Latino two-parent household.

The only area where the new report found consistently higher Black consumer spending was for utility costs: electricity, heating fuel, water and sewer charges. The report cited risk-based pricing that often connects mandatory deposits or low credit scores for these services.

It is equally true, however, that older and less-insulated housing is also a relevant factor in driving up the price of utility services. In another professional post, as a local government official I witnessed first-hand how winter utility bills force difficult challenges for many people of low to moderate incomes.

In cold-weather climates, winter heating bills can often be higher than the cost of housing itself.  If utility providers are regulated by a moratorium on cutoffs for failure to pay winter utility bills, spring shut-off notices are as predictable as flowers in bloom. During cold weather months, delinquent utility accounts can run several hundred if not thousands of dollars in arrears. In warm-weather climates, the surge in utility costs are usually associated with spring and summer temperatures; but with the same financial burden.

“We can only create a more equitable future by confronting the racial wealth gap and the public policies that continue to fuel and exacerbate it,” concludes the report.

In other words, targeted public policy reforms are the key to closing the nation’s wealth gap. These changes will require the same focus, vigilance and endurance of our historical efforts that forged laws addressing fair housing, voting rights, and equal employment opportunities.

“Equal achievements in key economic indicators, such as employment and education, do not lead to equal levels of wealth and financial security for households of color,” said Tom Shapiro, report co-author and Director of Brandeis University’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy. “White households have a leg up, while households of color face systematic barrier to growing wealth, reproducing our long-standing racial wealth gap over generations.”

We should all join together to dismantle the lingering legacy of economic exclusion, and create a more financially inclusive future. When we do, in future years, new Black History chapters will note how we provided better opportunities for all of America’s children.

It’s past time for our ‘fair share’ of America’s wealth.

Charlene Crowell is the communications deputy director with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Pathfinders for Black History Month
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - I love Black History, and so revel in Black History Month.  Not that Black History should be constrained to a month.  Indeed, when I wrote my book Surviving and Thriving: 365 Facts in Black Economic History in 2010, I hoped that some folks would touch the book each day and talk about the many ways African American people have shaped our nation’s economic life, from building this country, to being the basis of our bond system.  Despite my work, and that of others, Black History Month celebrations seem to center on the men in our history, and on the familiar names.  Our 45^th President has lifted up Frederick Douglas, touting his many accomplishments, as if he is still living.  Omarosa, don’t you give this man talking points? He needs to be locked into the Museum of African American History and Culture, and then forced to watch Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro. I digress.

You’ve heard of Frederick Douglas (1818-1895), Ida B. Wells, Dr. Dorothy Height, WEB DuBois and Mary McLeod Bethune.  But do you know Venture Smith, Mary Bowser, James Forten, Charles Wiggins, Clara Smith, Paul R. Williams, and Jackie Ormes?  These are among the Pathfinders that Tonya Bolden has lifted up in her book, Pathfinders:  The Journeys of 16 Extraordinary Black Souls.  Her book is extraordinary not only because it features the biographies of relatively unknown and amazing African Americans, but also because she puts their lives in context.  Thus, each biography talks about what was happening historically during the subject’s lives.  She also highlights their contemporaries, expanding the reach of the book and, perhaps, challenging students to do their own research about other notable African Americans.

Tonya Bolden is an award-winning children’s book author, but Pathfinders is no children’s book.  To be sure it should be ordered in every school library and purchased by many parents.  But young people will not be the only ones enhanced by a book that highlights sixteen stellar African Americans, many unknown.  Bolden says, “Without denying racism and oppression, I did not want to talk about racism, but about accomplishment.”  So she set out to offer a range of occupations for the young people who will read her book.  “I wanted to give kids variety,” she told me.  “I also wanted to expose them to people who had done something.”  Black folks have done amazing things, and Bolden says she wants to encourage young people to “dream big and take chances”.  Her book reflects that, lifting up Richard Potter, a Black magician who traveled the world as a cabin boy before joining a circus, studying with a ventriloquist, and stepping out on his own to be, says Bolden, “the first magician born in the United States to have success in the land of his birth.”  Or who would have thought that Sissieretta Jones, the daughter of enslaved people, would have had a successful career as a concert singer?  Jones performed at Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall, sung at the White House for President Benjamin Harrison, and completed a European tour.  Bolden says she wants young people to “think big”.  Well, in spotlighting Sissieretta Jones, she encourages that dream.  While the average American earned about $400 a year in Jones’ heyday, her earnings were more than $8000 a year.  She was one of the highest paid Black entertainers in the United States.

The richness of Bolden’s book lies in the fact that she does offer occupational variety.  There are entertainers but there are also women near and dear to my heart, women that I’ve written about over the years.  One is Dr. Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander, the first African American woman to receive the Ph.D. in economics, and one of the first three to receive the Ph.D.  in a single week in June 1921.   Georgiana Rose Simpson earned her Ph.D. in German from the University of Chicago, and Eva Beatrice Dykes earned her Ph.D. in English from Radcliffe (now Harvard).  She taught at DC’s Dunbar High School, Howard University and Oakwood College (now University) in Huntsville, Alabama.

Another sister Bolden lifts up is Maggie Lena Walker, the first African American woman to form and run a bank, Penny Savings Bank, in Richmond, Virginia.  Maggie Lena, cannily merged her bank with others to survive the Great Depression, and the bank thrived until it closed in 2009.  As an economist, Maggie Lena Walker and Dr. Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander resonate with me, but many will also enjoy the lives of architect Paul Williams, combat pilot Eugene Ballard, or filmmaker Oscar Michaeaux.  Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson, the woman whose accomplishments were highlighted in the movie, Hidden Figures, is also featured in Bolden’s book.

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist. Her latest book “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy” is available via www.amazon.com for booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visit www.juliannemalveaux.com