Pioneers of Progress: Recognizing African American Financial Entrepreneurs

Post Date: 2/12/2024

In recognition of Black History Month, Capital Bank is spotlighting prominent African Americans who have been pioneers in the financial services industry. These African American entrepreneurs demonstrated a strong spirit of innovation, resilience and impact that changed the financial and business worlds.

Maggie Lena Walker

Maggie Lena Walker was the first African American woman to charter and serve as president of a bank in the United States. In 1903, Walker founded St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Richmond, Virginia, after discovering that white-owned banks often didn’t accept deposits from Black organizations. The bank was seeded with capital raised from members of the Independent Order of St. Luke, hence the bank’s name. It served more than 50,000 members in 1,500 local chapters.

In 1930, St. Luke Penny Savings Bank merged with two other Black-owned banks to form Consolidated Bank & Trust, where Walker served as chairperson of the board of directors. This bank operated continuously under Black ownership until 2005, making it the oldest continuously operated Black-owned bank in the U.S. up until this time. It was acquired by Peoples Bancorp in 2021.

O.W. Gurley

O.W. Gurley was the founder of what became known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 1906, he purchased 40 acres of land that became known as Greenwood, where he ran businesses and supported other Black entrepreneurs including owners of brickyards, theaters, restaurants, salons, medical practices and law offices. Greenwood eventually became a thriving area with its own school system, bus service, post office and bank. It was said that a dollar changed hands 19 times in Greenwood before it left the community, which speaks to its self-sustenance.

Gurley was one of the wealthiest men in Tulsa before his property, along with all of Black Wall Street, was destroyed by the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and he was forced to flee the community. He lost most of his fortune, which was estimated to be almost $200,000.

Reginald F. Lewis

Reginald F. Lewis founded and built the first Black-owned business to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue. Before becoming an entrepreneur, the Harvard Law graduate helped establish Wall Street’s first African American law firm where he became special counsel to major corporations including General Foods and Equitable Life. In 1983, his firm TLC Group performed a leveraged buyout of McCall Pattern Company, which was struggling. After a turnaround, he sold it four years later and realized a 90-to-1 return on his investment.

In 1987, Lewis spearheaded a $985 million deal to purchase Beatrice Foods, the largest leveraged buyout of overseas assets by a U.S. company at the time. As Chairman and CEO of the new TLC Beatrice International Foods, Lewis repositioned the company, paid down debt and increased net worth. By 1992, the company had reached annual sales of $1.8 billion.

Douglas E. Harris

Douglas E. Harris was one of the first African Americans to serve as general counsel of an FCM. He became general counsel at JP Morgan Futures in 1982 where he served for more than a decade before serving as the senior deputy comptroller for capital markets at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Here, he oversaw the regulation and supervision of banks’ capital market activities and development of risk management policies.

In 2001, Harris became the COO and general counsel of BrokerTec Futures Exchange and BrokerTec Clearing Co. — he was the first African American to serve as the general counsel of an exchange and clearing house. After this, he became managing director at Promontory Financial Group in 2004. Harris was inducted into the FIA Hall of Fame in 2021.

Robert L. Johnson

Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television (BET) in 1980, building it from a small cable outlet with only two hours of weekly programming to a broadcasting juggernaut with an audience of more than 70 million households. In 1991 BET became the first Black-controlled company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Johnson sold BET to Viacom in 2001 for $3 billion, which made him the first African American billionaire.

Johnson also became the first African American owner of a major U.S. professional sports team when he purchased the NBA Charlotte Bobcats and the WNBA Charlotte Sting in 2004. In addition, he co-founded Our Stories Films in 2006, which created family-oriented movies aimed at African American audiences.

Russell L. Goings Jr.

Russell L. Goings Jr. founded First Harlem Securities in 1971, which was the second African American-owned brokerage firm to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, after an injury kept him from playing professional football with the Buffalo Bills. At this time, the chances of a Black man working for a Wall Street brokerage firm were “nil to none,” he is quoted as saying. Goings was one of the first to recognize the opportunity for a Black stockbroker to present new investment opportunities to wealthy Black athletes and entertainers.

Goings structured First Harlem Securities so that it included several principals with voting stock, which brought more African Americans into the NYSE and changed the character of Wall Street. After leaving First Harlem Securities in 1976, Goings launched a new career as a dealer in African American art, eventually serving as the first Black chairman of the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Rose Meta Morgan

Rose Meta Morgan was one of the founders of the Freedom National Bank in New York, the city’s only Black-owned commercial bank. Before this, Morgan owned and operated the Rose Meta House of Beauty in Sugar Hill, which became the largest African American beauty parlor in the world by 1946, grossing annual sales of more than $3 million. In 1955, she expanded and opened Rose Morgan’s House of Beauty in New York City — it included a salon, dressmaking department and charm school — and she added a wig salon in the early 1960s. Throughout her beauty career, Morgan employed and trained more than 3,000 people.

Morgan’s challenges in obtaining business financing due to her race prompted her to get involved in the banking industry, eventually helping start Freedom National Bank in 1964. According to Morgan, she could borrow money from her bank to buy a car but not expand her business.

Capital Bank salutes these and countless other Black entrepreneurs who helped shape the business and financial markets we know today.