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A DOUBLE SIDED SUCCESS STORY:

Maggie Walker-(First Woman and First African American Woman to start and run a bank).

Maggie Lena Walker was an American teacher, businesswoman, and banker. She was the first woman to charter a bank in the United States. Her bank still exist today and the bank thrives today as the oldest continually African American-operated bank in the United States.

Since the age of fourteen, Ms. Walker had been a member of the Grand United Order of St. Luke, an African-American fraternal and cooperative insurance society founded in Baltimore in 1867 by a former slave, Mary Prout, with headquarters established in Richmond in 1889. The order had been established to assure proper health care and burial arrangements of its members and to encouraged self-help and racial solidarity. Walker worked her way the organization up until (in 1899), she became the executive secretary-treasurer of the organization. now renamed the Independent Order of St. Luke. The order was in debt at the time so she accepted a reduced salary of eight dollars per month.

In 1902, she started publishing a newsletter, the St. Luke Herald to increase awareness of the activities of the organization and to help in the educational work of the order. The following year, she opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank and became its president. The bank's goal was to facilitate loans to the community. By 1920, the bank helped purchase about 600 homes. By 1924, the Independent Order of St. Luke had 50,000 members, 1500 local chapters, a staff of 50 working in its Richmond headquarters and assets of almost $400,000.

Ms. Walker's financial genius was aimed at racial empowerment. Working through a network of black women reformers, Ms. Walker supported African American social causes and encouraged other blacks to contribute some of their savings to enterprises that promoted racial progress. (A philosophy and way of life that we here at Forgotten Americans.com believe MUST revive itself for the good of the African American community).

After federal regulations forced the bank to separate from the Independent Order of St. Luke, and the Great Depression led to bank mergers, Walker became chairman of the board of the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, Richmond's only bank for blacks. By World War II, Consolidated was one of only six black-owned banks in the country. It still exists today. The Penny Savings Bank absorbed all other black-owned banks in Richmond in 1929 and became the Consolidated Bank Maggie L. Walker was a true visionary of her time and her vision still lives on today at Consolidated Bank & Trust Company. Hunderds of small businesses (black, brown and white) have been able to grow their businesses because of financing by Consolidated Bank & Trust Company.

Jobs, jobs, jobs, that's what small American businesses provide and are at the core of the great American economy. Spread the word of this great African American woman.

NEXT MONTH:

Dr. Meredith C. Gourdine

Physicist and engineer, Dr. Meredith G. Gourdine, is best known for his ground breaking work in the research of electrogasdynamics and for his invention of various electrostatic precipitator systems including the engineering technique called "Incineraid", which aids the removal of smoke from burning buildings, and a method used to disperse fog from airport runways. He held more than 40 patents for various inventions in his lifetime.

As an interesting side note, Meredith Groudine won the silver medal in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki for the long jump.

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Remember,"Knowledge is Power"! Don't accept what people tell you or what you hear, your research and change your life.

Our GOAL of this Website?

To create pride in young people and help reduce racial and gender stereotypes by providing the COMPLETE and ALL-Inclusive story of American History.

Thanks for visiting our web site and come back on occasion to view our updates as we continually add more Forgotten Americans. Also very soon our online store will be open and we will initially sell Forgotten American T-Shirts like the one shown below.

Be sure to visit our Forgotten Great Americans Stories.

Sincerely

H. Broussard

We built this web site to provide honest all-encompassing, all-embracing facts and events about American history. No spin, no lies, no revisionism.

The intent of this web site is to systematically help people understand that people of color and women have also made MAJOR contributions to America.

There are many web sites on the Internet that provide static historical information about female, black, brown, or yellow people's history. Very few of these web sites correlate African American, women or Asian people's invention's (or their historical participation) to the contribution of our nation's great wealth or the creation of JOBs for all Americans, (white, women or people of color). This means these individuals made a direct (and positive) contribution to the American Gross Domestic Product, (GDP).

Direct (& positive) contribution in terms of :

Creating Thousands of Job opportunities,
Creating opportunities for HUGE wealth creation, (personal and corporate),
Improving American "standard of living",
Helping to make America an economic world leader.

[NOTE: To counter racist revisionists who will be angry with this web site--Please read our comments on Black Myth or Black Facts?]

Some quick facts:

Historical Fact #1
Few history books mention Tisquantum (better known as Squanto - c. 1580? - 1622) who lived with the Pilgrims,after having been sold as a slave to England and then finding his way back to America. He helped the pilgrims recover from their first difficult winter (where 45 of 104 died, and all the women perished). He taught them how to increase their food production by fertilizing their crops, and by directing them to the best places to catch fish and eels.

Historical Fact #2:
Of the 4,000 workers on the transcontinental railroad, (1864 -1869) two thirds were Chinese. These Chinese workers helped build the transcontinental railroad over the Sierras and into the interior plains, (and many died during this period--many racists web sites try to claim that only about 4 Chinese died and that there were only about 400 employed at the most--again check the facts at .EDU and .GOV based websites). This in turn created great business opportunities for many and expanded the wealth of the industrialists.

Historical Fact #3:
Many African-Americans have helped to created multi-billion industries'. Like Frederick Jones whose inventions helped to revolutionized the "cold" food industry and how you get food on your table, (EVEN today)!! His refrigeration unit became the first product of the Thermo King Corporation-(see Thermo King's "about us" web page), which in turn became a multi-billion company and an industry leader! Providing jobs for thousands of white males, (many who live in the lie that blacks created nothing). Yet, even to this day, racist revisionist, racists web sites and racists historians try to deny his contributions.

Modern Day Historical Fact #4:
The computer industry's purposeful failure to mention Dr. Mark Dean's IBM PC invention-(see panel to your right). This product alone is response for hundreds of thousands of jobs--WORLD WIDE! Plus billions in wealth creation for many, many individuals.

All the great things we have in America today are because of human diversity and these individuals unbinding dedication to their tasks, historical timing, and our initial access to rich and unlimited natural resources. The point is (and a FACT), our greatness as a country was or is never about one individual (or just European males) it was and is about diversity. This is the reality of human and American history.

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