Maggie Walker, Civil Rights Icon and Advocate for Women’s Rights

 

We often narrowly define historical figures in popular history.  They get reduced to a general description associated with their most prominent historical act.  This is certainly true of Richmond, Virginia native Maggie Walker.  She is well known as the first American woman to be president of a bank and ambiguously described as a civil rights leader from the early 20^th century.  However, this brief description leaves out much.  Walker came on the scene after the Civil War when Americans were beginning the long recovery from the great sin of slavery.  She did far more than found a successful banking interest, she was an integral part of the early civil rights movement.  Often that movement is associated with the 1950s and 1960s.  But that journey began long before the Selma bus boycott, Woolworth lunch counter sit ins and freedom marches.  The nationally organized activism of the 1950s-60s would not have been possible in 1865, 1880 or even 1920.  African-Americans in 1865 lacked a coherent community, educational opportunities, economic institutions, black owned businesses and other structural necessities to carry out a coordinated national campaign.  In the first half of the 20^th century, Maggie Walker and others, through tireless efforts, learning from experience and mistakes, created the foundations necessary for a national movement in the second half of the century.  What follows is not a comprehensive review of national conditions.  Instead this article will focus on Richmond, Virginia which was a leading center for African American progress, known as the “birthplace of black capitalism” and Maggie Walker’s role in the process.  Examining what happened in Richmond will provide some insight into how African Americans began taking control of their own destinies, creating a community and organizing to develop strategies for confronting the segregation and discrimination of Jim Crow.  It is here that we find Maggie Walker’s full value in building a more equitable society for all.

Maggie Mitchell’s Early Life and Conditions in Richmond, Virginia After the Civil War

Maggie Lena Mitchell was probably born right after the Civil War between 1865 and 1867 to Elizabeth Draper and Eccles Cuthbert in Richmond, Virginia.  Her mother was a teenager and freed slave working as an assistant cook in the household of Richmond native and Union spy Elizabeth Van Lew.  Cuthbert was an Irish reporter from the North with the New York Herald, then the largest newspaper in the US.  Though her father had a limited role in Maggie’s life, she was fortunate in that her mother married Van Lew’s butler William Mitchell within two years of Maggie’s birth.  He raised Maggie as his own child and she took his name from early in life.

Maggie arrived at a pivotal time in the African American community.  Slavery ended in 1865 bringing about freedom from the shackles of slavery but presenting new obstacles.  Assimilating into the broader American society would be a long step by step process starting from scratch.  Many former slaves suddenly lost homes and work with no community and few resources to provide a living much less longer-term needs.  They had to first find a way to establish a means for the essentials: food, clothing, home and work.

After marriage, the Mitchells began trying to improve their lot.  Maggie’s father found a more lucrative position as a waiter at Richmond’s largest hotel, the St. Charles.  The Mitchells moved to College Alley behind Medical College of Virginia off Richmond’s main thoroughfare, Broad Street.  This area was a cultural and economic center for both the white and black communities.  At the outset of the Civil War, free blacks made up over 10% of Richmond’s population.  Housing was not segregated so African American homes existed amongst white housing.  After the war, Richmond and many other southern cities experienced an influx of newly freed slaves (between 1860 and 1870, the urban black population grew by 62% nationwide).  Increasingly African Americans settled north of Broad Street.  Later, laws segregating neighborhoods confined blacks legally to this area.

Like the Mitchells, millions of African Americans spent the first two years after the Civil War finding a home and work.  They then began the next phase, building a community of their own.  The first focus came within churches.  African Americans did not even have independence in basic organizations like churches before the Civil War.  Sunday services were one of the few places they could gather as a group.  However, Virginia law restricted meetings and administration of black churches.

The oldest black church in Richmond, First Baptist Church, formed in 1780 with 50 white and 150 black parishioners.  As the African American congregants grew disproportionately faster than white members, the church split in 1838 when whites moved to a new edifice.  1,600 black parishioners remained in the old building and had their own church but not autonomy.  Other black churches also existed in Richmond but all were subject to the same restrictions.  State law required a white head pastor and white board to oversee church functions.  After Nat Turner’s uprising in 1831, Virginia lawmakers cracked down on any gathering of African Americans.  Church services could only take place during daylight hours.  For special events such as funerals, African American attendants had to obtain permits in advance.

With emancipation in 1865, African Americans finally gained control of their churches with the powers to appoint pastors and elect board members of their own choosing.  The importance of churches to the black community cannot be underestimated.  Spiritual fulfillment and character development aside, churches became the centers of community activism and incubators of finance and management.  Churches provided the first experience with basic administration skills necessary to keep the church going, maintain facilities, raise funds for charitable outreach and other activities.

Unlike white society which strictly limited the roles of men and women, black communities allowed more broad opportunities for women in non-domestic activities.  Female parishioners participated in church administration from the beginning.  After the Civil War churches became centers of community, education and political activity with women integrally involved in management.  Soon other centers of autonomy developed, most importantly in the form of black owned businesses.

Maggie’s mother started one such business in Richmond.  Elizabeth began cleaning clothes out of the Mitchell’s home.  She had a group of regular clients and collected laundry on Monday.  With no plumbing, water had to be fetched, the clothes washed, dried, starched and ironed in time to be returned by Saturday.  The work was strenuous.  For example, scrubbing clothes with lye on a metal washing board often left the laundresses’ hands painfully raw.  Working from home allowed Elizabeth to raise Maggie and later her younger brother Johnnie while providing extra income.  The children took an active role in the business picking up clothes, helping with the washing chores and delivering laundry back to clients.  The 1870 census listed 742 laundry businesses in Richmond, all women.  In addition to having more freedom in child rearing, Elizabeth and other women formed informal collectives working together in one home.  The work groups provided another avenue outside church meetings to socialize, discuss community issues and formulate solutions.

These businesses may have been small but they were crucial for African Americans emerging from slavery.  To function in the wider society, African Americans had to form their own sense of community which would take time to develop.  That process began in churches and in small enclaves like these laundress cooperatives which were related and linked.  It is worth noting that in describing these steps, there is no fixed date where one was completed and another began.  They often overlapped and the effort to create and grow community and financial stability was never ending.

As with other laundress children, young Maggie worked hard.  As she later put it: “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth but instead with a clothes basket almost [always] on my head. 1  Helping her mother fostered a strong work ethic that would serve Maggie well throughout life while also exposing her to basic business practices.

The Mitchells lived within close walking distance of the First African Baptist Church (FABC) and Maggie began attending Sunday School at an early age.  In addition to learning basic business principles from her mother’s laundry business, church affiliation exposed Maggie to initiatives to grow the free African American community.  Even as a youngster, Maggie participated in church administration, later taking charge of the church finances.  She also absorbed the sermons and Christian teachings.  Throughout her life, the FABC was a source of strength and solace.  Maggie employed a religious tone in her many speeches often relying on biblical teaching to support her arguments for a more egalitarian society for African Americans and wider participation for women outside the domestic sphere.  She learned that rhetoric and style at FABC.

Being born into slavery and having two children by the age of 22 prevented Elizabeth Mitchell from receiving a formal education.  However, like Americans of all races, she was determined for her children to have better opportunities than she did.  As African Americans began establishing their own communities, they recognized the value of education.  Informal and Reconstruction schools began appearing in Richmond in 1865.  Night schools teaching basic literacy to adults also proliferated.  Public schools came into being in Virginia in 1869 but they were strictly segregated.  Churches housed many early schools taught by northern white missionaries.  By 1875 African Americans were actively lobbying to establish a class of black teachers, the first set of educated blacks in a working role.  Richmond public schools were inadequate by the standards of the day, but were the best system for African Americans in the South.  Richmond had high interest and enthusiasm, a better student/teacher ratio, better teacher salaries and higher graduation rates than the national average.

In spite of the difficulties of maintaining her laundry business, Elizabeth made sure Maggie entered school in 1^st grade in 1872 (kindergarten did not yet exist) at an abandoned school informally known as the Old Lancasterian School (later renamed the Valley School).  The school relied on the Bible and McGuffey readers for reading and writing.  The curriculum also included arithmetic, geography, and history via Goodrich’s History of the United States.  Maggie later advanced to a middle school on Navy Hill.  By this time, demands for African American teachers were coming to fruition.  A mostly black faculty taught middle school including Peter Woolfolk and O. M. Stewart who also published a newspaper The Virginia Star and were community activists.  Here, Maggie learned about the importance of self-advancement and community awareness through Woolfolk and Stewart’s example and teaching.

As a teenager, Maggie entered the Colored Normal School (high school, founded in 1867).  “Normal” was a term of the time that indicated teacher training.  By the time she matriculated, the Normal School had 300 students and had more applicants than seats.  Maggie only gained admission by passing a competitive exam.  High school included a rigorous curriculum: science (physics, chemistry, geography, astronomy), ancient and US history, composition, rhetoric, penmanship, literature, algebra and arithmetic.  As Maggie entered her final year, an additional 4^th year language requirement was added: French, Latin or German.

Upon graduation, Maggie gained an appointment earning $35 per month at the Valley School teaching primary grammar.  For women in this era, employment options were limited.  Professional opportunities (law, medicine, business including clerks, accountants, etc.) were largely unavailable for blacks and/or women.  In the North, factories offered blue collar work.  The South had little industry and was only a limited option in the 1880s.  Even when available, industrial employment included long hours, dangerous work conditions, low pay and no opportunity for advancement.  Women had limited educational options, few political rights and no right to vote.  Society restricted women, especially once married, to a domestic sphere of raising children and maintaining the household.  African American women in Richmond mostly worked as domestic servants or laundresses.  With educational reforms of the 1880s,teaching opened a new field to black women offering better compensation than domestic employment.  Unlike the other options, teaching also relied upon education and intellectual ability.

True Reformers, International Order of St. Luke’s and other Fraternals

As the Industrial Revolution took hold in the US after the Civil War, commerce and industry began replacing agriculture as the primary basis of economic activity.  Developing a business created new requirements, capital to start and maintain a business, goods to sell, and the need for a work force.  Fraternal organizations such as the Elks, Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Maccabees and others cropped up in the white and black communities as a way to network, establish business standards, and find synergies between businesses.  Though fraternals had a national board, separate councils/lodges primarily concentrated on developing business on a local level.  Fraternals promoted healthy financial practices such as thrift, savings, self-reliance, reciprocity, self-governance, and civility.

Based in Christian mores fraternals also advocated egalitarianism among members of different social stations within the lodge, favoring patriotism as part and parcel of good moral character.  They stressed honesty and integrity in business dealings to include charity and social responsibility as important components of business ethics.  Life insurance quickly became a priority within these groups to provide for burial expenses in the event of death.  In an era before Social Security and other social safety net programs, life insurance cushioned the blow of a death in the family which often meant a significant loss of income in the face of high funeral costs. The importance of insurance is evident in the growth of membership.  1.8 million insurance policies through fraternals existed nationwide by 1890 and grew to 8.5 million by 1910.

Long before emancipation, slaves had their own ad hoc secret societies to provide assistance and in some cases like the Underground Railroad foster escapes.  After the Civil War, these societies “surfaced” often within the structure of black churches.  The first major fraternal of importance in Richmond was the Grand Order of True Reformers founded by William Washington Browne in Mobile, Alabama in the 1870s.  Originally an escaped slave who served in the Union Army in the Civil War, Browne had a forceful personality and singular vision.  Like other fraternals, the True Reformers emphasized being “good citizens” who “obey the laws of the government and to practice virtue, morality, industry and economy.”  3

The Reconstruction administration set up the Freedman’s Bank in 1867.  The bank attracted $162,000 in deposits but the money went back to Washington DC where it was squandered in poor investments and unsecured loans.  Oversight was non-existent and the Freedman’s Bank collapsed, part of the burgeoning corruption in the Grant Administration.  With white banks often reticent to do business with African Americans, community leaders recognized the need to manage their own financial institutions and businesses.  Browne was among the first to initiate the next step to expand economic opportunities.  He moved to Richmond in 1881 and established the True Reformers Bank in Richmond to provide a place for African Americans to save, provide loans for businesses and mortgages for homes.

For African Americans, navigating the business world included obstacles not present for whites, namely segregation and discrimination.  As pernicious as segregation could be, separation provided at least one major advantage: African American businesses had a captive set of customers to support commerce within the community.  Black community and business leaders continually called on their brethren to solicit and support black businesses as an economic weapon to wield against discrimination.  The struggle for the loyalty of black consumers remained an issue throughout the 1890s to the 1930s and beyond.

The True Reformers went on to found a newspaper, The Reformer, establish a 150 room hotel, a retirement home, and open retail stores in multiple cities.  Browne did not limit membership to men.  He opened the ranks to women to serve as officers in the organization and hired female employees for True Reformer businesses.  Browne also established independent juvenile divisions with local councils called Rosebud Nurseries to inculcate the values of thriftiness and financial responsibility at an early age.  Women often directed juvenile organizations.

 In addition to the True Reformers, other fraternals came to Richmond  in the early 1880s.  Mary Prout founded the International Order of St. Luke’s (IOSL) in Washington DC.  Soon after a branch of St. Luke’s opened in Richmond.  Maggie Mitchell joined St. Luke’s at the age of 14 and was active in the fraternal for the rest of her life.

Maggie worked briefly for the True Reformers and joined the St. Luke’s as a teenager.  By the age of 18, she was the secretary of her lodge and a delegate to the national convention.  Through participation in the two major Richmond fraternals and becoming a teacher, Maggie was joining the small cadre of educated elites.  She was also taking an increasingly prominent place in the early stages of the civil rights movement.  African Americans had begun developing a community and institutions to join a wider free society while developing infrastructure in the form of education and  economic stability.  By the 1880s, schools and fraternals produced a small core of talented and educated individuals ready to take the next step, economic development and local organization.

Maggie Mitchell Enters a New World and Begins Making Changes

As a teacher, Maggie taught primary grammar earning $35 per month, more than she could have made laundering clothes or working in a domestic capacity.  As part of the “unquenchable search for knowledge” learned under the tutelage of O. M. Stewart, she took accounting classes after her work day ended.  Throughout her life, Maggie read widely and sought to broaden her horizons.  By the time of her death, she owned an impressive library of books on subjects including science, nutrition, history, religious philosophy and civil rights.

Maggie taught for three years before marrying Armistead Walker, a prominent builder of homes in Richmond, in 1886.  Virginia law, banned married women teaching but the loss of a daily job opened new opportunities.  Already an elected officer by the age of 17, she became more deeply involved with St. Luke’s.  Now Maggie Walker, she began actively recruiting new members for St. Luke’s and rose steadily in the leadership ranks.  She helped found the Juvenile Department in 1895 and managed the St. Luke’s Association Fund.  Under her leadership, the Juvenile Division and the fund began growing steadily.

Even as the Association Fund and Juvenile Department gained steam, the adult division of St. Luke’s increasingly struggled over the 1890s.  By 1899, the Order faced a crisis.  With assets of only $400, debts of over $3,000, and a steadily declining adult membership, St. Luke’s leader, the Right Worthy Grand Secretary W. M. T. Forrester resigned claiming St. Luke’s was no longer viable.  He claimed the Order was too financially weak and had too few members to continue.  With Forrester’s departure, Maggie Walker stepped into the breach accepting the position of Right Grand Worthy Secretary, a title she would hold the rest of her life.

The challenges were daunting, but years of recruiting, financial management of several organizations including the First African Baptist Church, the True Reformers and St. Luke’s Juvenile Department had prepared Walker well.  She began travelling across Virginia and West Virginia expanding her efforts into other states as well.  Between 1890 and 1900, 30% of African Americans living in Richmond in 1890 migrated to Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, New Jersey and other northern states.  Walker began recruiting members for St. Luke’s in states where black Richmonders had migrated and enjoyed success.

Within two years, Walker stabilized St. Luke’s financial books by improving the efficiency of collecting dues (and adding members) and in paying out death benefits promptly.  The latter reform inspired confidence in members and thus made collection of dues easier.  Recruiting trips paid dividends as well adding more than 1,500 new members in two years.

Having rejuvenated the order, the time was right to advance a larger vision to bring about the next phase of African American development: expansion of an economic base.  Walker had a complementary goal in mind as well, broadening opportunities for women beyond the domestic sphere.  For Walker, both goals were necessary to move African Americans toward a stronger position in the wider American culture.  At the 1901 national St. Luke’s Convention, Walker set out a comprehensive vision:

1. Found a new bank to broaden African American economic opportunities;
2. found a store (the Emporium);
3. create factories to generate jobs and wealth; and
4. start a newspaper.

An unmistakable evangelical strain showed through in the appeal for the bank:

“Let us put our moneys together; let us put our moneys at usury among ourselves; and realize the benefits among ourselves.  Shall we continue to bury our talent, wrapped in a napkin and hidden away, when it ought to be gaining us still other talents?”  5

Walker’s appeal defined her as a “race woman.”  She was someone who sought to enhance her knowledge and financial situation while being aware of the destructive impact of segregation and mindful her duty to alleviate the impact of discrimination through the creation of solutions to address the needs of her community.  Her words call for African Americans to invest in their own community, initiate financial institutions, and create jobs by modern means, factories and retail– the hallmarks of the Industrial Revolution in which she lived.  There is a clear allusion to Christ’s Parable of the Talents calling for her audience not to hide their talents (money) but invest and grow them.  (Matthew 25: 14-30:  “For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.  And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”)  6

For the next two years, Walker crisscrossed the East Coast and Midwest recruiting members for St. Luke’s, investors for the bank and other initiatives and advocating for community unity and action.  The principles of thrift and hard work promoted by St. Luke’s were integral in Maggie’s frequent appeals.  Her tone was steeped in the Bible and easily recognizable to her church going audiences.  By the first decade of the 1900s, Maggie had matured as a speaker and her experience showed in accounts like this one from The Negro Advocate newspaper in 1902:

“For fifteen minutes  . . . such a speech, persuasive, musical and eloquent fell from her [Walker’s] lips as she called upon the black men of Virginia to stand up for their rights, to fight slavery, to live for their children and hers, caused old men and young men to weep.” . . .Closing, the house fairly quivered under the thunderous applause, while many who could grasped their hands as she passed from the chancel to the door, invoking God’s blessings upon her.”  7

Walker’s speeches carried consistent themes of St. Luke’s and her personal philosophy: economic action to uplift the community, coupling hard work with taking advantage of opportunities and fulfilling responsibilities while leading a righteous Christian life.  Walker intertwined secular economic activity and Christian morality and Walker frequently used Biblical authority and stories.  She cited 2 Timothy among other verses to support the melding of Christianity and commerce: “All scripture by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”  8

Unity was a necessity in the face of the legalized discrimination and segregation of Jim Crow Laws:

“Let us examine what is going on right under our noses. . . [modes of public transportation] carry . . .  degrading “jim crow” signs.  The Negro in traveling pays first class price, for second and third class accommodation.  . . . With the loss of citizenship [and voting rights], “jim crowed” shortening of our school term, the destroying of Negro business enterprises, the refusal to employ Negroes . . . with hostile legislation on the increase—there are those who still believe that we should look to the Lord and keep our mouths shut . . .

Somebody must speak.  Somebody must cry aloud.  . . . We must get together and reason together.”  9

Walker made a practical appeal to counter segregation with economic empowerment beginning with unified action and community resources.  St. Luke’s members should “believe in prayer . . . but [have] greater faith in the prayer which has the dollar to enforce the petition.”10  By building and supporting their own businesses, African Americans could “kill the lion of prejudice by ceasing to feed him.”11  Citing Exodus, Walker likened St. Luke’s to “the pillar of cloud and by day and pillar of fire by night” 12 leading African Americans toward a promised land of a more egalitarian society.

In addition to pleas for unified action, Walker called on African Americans to exercise personal responsibility to battle discrimination.  She often referenced the Story of the Fig Tree in the New Testament where Christ seeing a fig tree with full leaves tried to pick its fruit.  Though fully blossomed, the tree had no figs.  Christ cursed the tree because as Walker said: “the tree was a living lie.  It stood there  . . . claiming by its appearance that it was fruitful.  But when the test was made—there was nothing . . . [the tree was a] deception, . . . [a] brazen hypocrisy.” 13.  Walker called on her listeners to do more than just talk about improving their personal situation and that of their community.  Talk without action was the modern fig tree: “appearance but no deeds; shadows but no substance.”  14

In her speeches, Walker made a strong appeal for an equal role for women at home and in the public sphere:

“Whatever I have done in this life has been because I love women.  Love to be surrounded by them.  Love to hear them talk all at once.   Love to listen to their trials and troubles.  Love to help them.  . . . And the great love I bear [for]. . . our Negro women, hemmed in, circumscribed with every imaginable obstacles [sic] in our way, blocked and held down by the fears and prejudices of whites—ridiculed and sneered at by the intelligent blacks.”  15

More than that, Walker argued marriage should be a partnership of equals where both husband and wife participated in decision making and contributed to the financial stability of the family:

“Let woman choose her own vocation, just as a man does.  Let her go into business, let her make money, let her become independent, if possible, of man: let her marry, bringing something into the partnership, if not money, a trade or business—something else besides the mere clothes upon her body.”  16

Turning Grand Schemes into Reality: St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank, the Herald, and Emporium

By 1902, St. Luke’s had over 8,000 members nationwide and was providing the necessary income stream to launch Walker’s enterprises.  After purchasing a printing press, the St. Luke Herald opened on March 29, 1902 “so that St. Luke’s on the mountaintop, and the St. Luke’s dwelling by the side of the sea, can hear the same order, keep in step to the same music, march in unison to the same command, though miles and miles intervene.” 17  The Herald joined The Planet, The Reformer, and The Virginia Baptist Reporter as Richmond’s fourth black newspaper  while also operating a profitable printing business.

The St. Luke Penny Savings Bank opened on November 2, 1902 with a celebration that complete with music and speeches that went well into the evening.  The bank drew depositers from Richmonders and out of state from New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other states.  The bank received over $8,000 in deposits on opening day and grew steadily ($21,000 by 1904 and over $85,000 by 1910).

As St. Luke’s opened businesses, Walker lived up to her words with action.  She staffed the new businesses with African Americans.  Consistent with the call for improving opportunities for women, the 19 member Penny Savings Bank board included six women.  She put women into leadership positions elsewhere within St. Luke’s and hired women to work as clerks and tellers in the bank.  These jobs provided women with greater income, use of their educational background and prestige.  Just as Walker recognized the obligation to uplift the African American community, opportunities generated duties to give back.  These white collar women filled leadership roles in charities, churches and other community organizations.  Developing the African American community advanced the goal of broadening and deepening economic foundations.

In 1905, St. Luke’s founded the St. Luke’s Emporium, a store catering to African Americans on Broad Street near more established white retailers.   The Emporium flourished at first but as the decade wore on began struggling.  Overall though, from 1902 to 1910, St. Luke’s various interests prospered and grew including insurance.

By 1910, Penny Savings had over $85,000 in deposits, owned land and was providing loans and mortgages to African Americans.  The Herald had a circulation of over 3,000 and maintained a lucrative printing business.  St. Luke’s membership swelled to over 25,000 adults and 7,000 children.  The build up would be important as new challenges emerged.

The Struggles of 1910

In 1908, a panic shook the American financial world.  The crash exposed mismanagement, waste and outright embezzlement rampant among the businesses and institutions run by both white and black fraternals.  As a result, the insurance and banking industries came under closer governmental scrutiny and regulation.  Fraternals funded their insurance through annual collections which became increasingly risky as the population aged.  Demographic changes required an evolution towards more modern insurance practices: actuarial tables, varying premium rates based on age and health and medical exams for prospective members.  St. Luke’s and other insurance providers had to adjust.  Each state began developing their own regulations which required compliance and keeping abreast of changes on a state by state basis.  Additionally, states were beginning to audit bank ledgers to ensure financial stability and deposit security.  Before long, Virginia and other states required banks disassociate from fraternal control.

The most shocking news of the tumultuous year of 1910 came when the True Reformers Bank and businesses went into receivership.  True Reformers had been an early beacon for the African American community and suddenly the 60,000 member group and all its resources and assets were all but gone.  W. W. Browne died in 1897 and his successors had mismanaged their books, the finances were a mess.  Walker credited Browne’s influence in a speech:

“[St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank] drew its inspiration and ambition from the one [True Reformer bank] which he [W. W. Browne] created.  I wish to acknowledge his greatness as a financier, the first of our day and time; and secondly, as an executor, officer of a business concern, having for its direct object the further perfection and training [of] Negroes in financiering and mercantile development.”  18

The influence was far greater than just the bank.  Browne’s vision of a more cohesive community developed through financial means became part of Walker’s and others’ plans.  Under Walker’s leadership, St. Luke’s continued trying to bring about the changes she and Browne sought.  After 1910, St. Luke’s insurance business remained in compliance in every state and grew.  White and black banks failed as regulatory compliance increased which benefitted those institutions that managed to stay in business.  Walker effectively and efficiently guided St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank’s transition to an independent corporation, Consolidated Bank & Trust which by 1911 grew to over $103,000 in deposits.  By 1919, deposits had more than tripled to $376,288.  Increases in deposit reflected consolidation within the banking industry and growing economic power of the African American community.  In Richmond, the number of businesses grew significantly in real numbers and diversity between 1880 and 1910:

African American owned businesses in Richmond, Virginia by decade:

Selected professions                    1880               1900               1910

Total businesses                              239                 613                  927

Barbers                                              21                    92                    86

Boot/shoemaker                              6                      21                    11

Blacksmith                                        12                    103                  72

Construction

(carpenters/builders)                     7                      12                    12

Cleaner/laundress                           n/a                  7                      36

Butchers/meat market                    3                      0                      3

Dressmaker/tailor                           0/1                  4/2                  78/11

Undertaker                                       0                      2                      8

Grocer                                                0                      150                  183

Fruit/vegetable dealer                    7                      20                   56

Restaurant/lunchroom                   0                      25                    69

Wood/coal dealer                            0                      12                    10

Saloon/billiards                               1                      6                      10

(Source: 1890, 1900, and 1910 Censuses as reported by John Ingham 19)

These numbers do not include banks, insurance concerns and other institutions also headquartered in Richmond.  The growth and diversity of businesses and professions reflected tireless efforts to instill management and financial skills within the community plus growing resources like the Consolidated Bank & Trust to provide opportunities.

With the outbreak of World War I, St. Luke’s enjoyed an adult membership of 40,000 with 10,000 more juveniles.  St. Luke’s was ready to play a significant role in the war effort raising funds and supplies for British relief effort.  After the US entered the war in 1917, St. Luke’s joined the Red Cross to create medical supplies and raised funds through War Savings Stamps and Liberty Bonds.  St. Luke’s sponsored a canteen for soldiers which included entertainment for the troops.  1,655 IOSL members served in the war, 6 died.  When the Spanish Flu pandemic broke out in 1918, St. Luke’s set up a hospital for flu victims within days of the outbreak.  As the situation worsened, Walker joined with Virginia’s First Lady Marguerite Davis to administer an emergency hospital at John Marshall High School. (For more on the Spanish Flu, please see: Spanish Flu: the Mother of all Pandemics).

Richmond as the Harlem of the South

The growing strength of the African American community was apparent in Richmond in the 1920s as Jackson Ward developed into the “Harlem of the South,” a reference to the flourishing of African American culture in New York City.  Richmond boasted a growing variety of black businesses centered on Second Street as Jackson Ward became an artistic, cultural and economic center for African Americans.

The Hippodrome at 528 North 2^nd Street opened in 1914 as a theater and movie house that drew some of the biggest African American acts over the next five decades: Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and later entertainers like Nat King Cole and James Brown.  Two hotels, Miller’s/Eggleston Hotel and Slaughter’s Hotel opened and operated successfully.  St. Luke’s built an impressive three story building to house its operations in 1903.  Churches grew and proliferated.  Victorian Era Italianate and Empire row houses appeared with distinctive wrought iron fences as increasingly affluent African Americans built stately homes on Marshall and Clay Streets (and other areas in Jackson Ward) including Walker’s own impressive home at 600 N. 2nd Street.

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After surviving the early 1910s, Walker and other community leaders spent the next two decades working to solidify and expand the foundations they had created.   Consolidated Bank & Trust, St. Luke’s insurance and the Herald continued to prosper.   St. Luke’s businesses employed a combined 54 men and women and 135 field agents (which does not include employees of the bank).  By 1924, St. Luke’s had over $2 million in assets, grew to 40,000 adult and 20,000 juvenile members having paid out over $1,000,000 in benefits.  That year, the Herald reached a circulation of 6,000.  By 1930, 30% of African American households in Richmond subscribed the Herald and Consolidated Bank & Trust had over $500,000 in assets and deposits.

Walker continued expanding African American community and opportunity helping to found a library at 00 East Clay Street, raising money and serving on the board of Hartshorn College, the female compliment to the all-male historically black Virginia Union University (Walker helped oversee the merger of Hartshorn with VUU in 1932).  She backed the foundation of a tuberculosis asylum, a community house to assist the poor and supported other causes.

 

Walker’s local successes led to national recognition and her participation in national organizations.  She became a national board member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League and National Women’s Association along with several other organizations.  Here, we can see another aspect of Walker and others’ efforts to expand the civil rights movement.  They had begun humbly scratching out small businesses forging a community out of the shackles of slavery.  Businesses expanded and local organizations grew to the point national coordination became feasible.  These are the roots of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.  The struggles to establish a foundation opened the possibility of organizing to combat and finally overcome Jim Crow on a broader scale.

The Great Depression hit in 1929 bringing an end to the prosperous 1920s.  The African American community felt the effects as much or more.  Many businesses suddenly collapsed.  To survive, Consolidated Bank & Trust merged with two other black banks.  St. Luke’s membership had grown to over 100,000 by 1929 but thereafter began losing members.

By 1930, Walker became increasingly disabled due to a fall in 1908 where she broke her kneecap.  She never fully recovered from the injury and by 1932 was permanently confined to a wheelchair.  Now in her 60s, Walker began cutting back on her speaking engagements turning over control of Consolidated Bank & Trust to Emmett C. Burke in 1930.

By late 1934, Walker knew she was dying.  She released one final message:  “Have faith, have hope, have courage, and carry on.”20  The Right Grand Worthy Secretary passed away on December 15, 1934.  Thousands attended the funeral at First African Baptist Church including dignitaries such as the Mayor of Richmond.  Hundreds more stood outside the church in a driving rain during the two hour service.  Flags of black and white businesses flew at half-mast with lamps in Jackson Ward draped in black.  Local St. Luke’s lodges and other organizations around the country held memorial services of their own.

Maggie Walker’s Legacy

Richmond’s largest newspaper, the Richmond Times Dispatch, printed a memorial editorial saying Walker “never betrayed her people and never let them down.”21  The quote had many meanings.  Walker was a “race woman” in every sense of the term.  She set high expectations for African Americans in demanding equality for women, opportunity for all through the Christian values of frugality, hard work, “love, purity and charity” (the last three were the unofficial motto of St. Luke’s).  Walker did her part to provide opportunities by building St. Luke’s into a vibrant organization, founding a bank, newspaper, Emporium, and reinvigorating an insurance business.   Her prudent and shrewd management allowed the bank and insurance business to survive a panic in 1908, increased regulation in 1910 and the Great Depression when many others failed.  More importantly, Walker enhanced the African American community from the local level expanding the economic base, fostering education, and providing opportunities and jobs to women and men not available in wider society.

In making St. Luke’s viable first in Virginia and then other states, African Americans could begin to move beyond daily survival to organize on a local and then national level.  Not every initiative succeeded.  The Emporium failed in 1911 and after Walker’s death, St. Luke’s went into a gradual decline finally closing in 1989.  Sadly, during and after the Great Depression, Jackson Ward followed St. Luke’s into gradual decay from the “Harlem of the South” to an impoverished area (though today the area is under significant redevelopment).  Consolidated Bank & Trust remained black owned until 2005 until bought out, but remains in business to this day.

However, Walker’s her impact is far greater than a bank.  The infrastructure Walker helped to develop would serve as a bulwark for the civil rights movement of the 1950s-60s.  Even as Richmond faded, the national movement began taking wing.  The 1930s saw the NAACP becoming an increasingly potent force on the national scene.  The NAACP began making headway such as desegregating the University of Maryland’s law school midway through the decade.  By 1938 the advocacy group formed its vaunted legal team led by Thorogood Marshall which successfully argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 which began the legal death of segregation and Jim Crow.   The national movement would not have been possible in the 1930s without the efforts to create community consciousness, economic resources, and organizational skills from the 1860s to the 1920s.  Maggie Lena Mitchell Walker deserves to be remembered for her tireless efforts, moral conduct and wise leadership in setting the stage for a more equitable America.

 

 

 

Footnotes:

1 Marlowe, Gertrude W., A Right Worthy Grand Mission.  Washington DC: Howard University Press, 2003, p. 5.

2 Ibid., p. 7.

3 Beito, David T. “To Advance the “Practice of Thrift and Economy”: Fraternal Societies and Social Capital, 1890-1920.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 4 (1999): 585-612. http://www.jstor.org/stable/206975.  p. 593.

4 Ibid., p. 607.

5 Marlowe, p. 83-84.

6 The Bible, New Testament, Book of Matthew, Chapter 25: 14-30.  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14-30&version=KJV).

7 Marlowe, p. 86.

8 Ibid., p. 66.

9  Ibid., p. 58.

10 Ibid., p. 61.

11 Ibid., p. 62.

12 Ibid., p. 67.

13 Ibid., p. 55.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., p. 56.

16 Ibid., p. 65.

17  Ibid., p. 84.

18  Beito, p. 607.

19  Ingham, John N. “Building Businesses, Creating Communities: Residential Segregation and the Growth of African American Business in Southern Cities, 1880-1915.” The Business History Review 77, no. 4 (2003): p. 648, 649, 662. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041232.

20  Marlowe, p. 251.

21  Ibid., p. 252.

 

 

Sources:

Anonymous, “Jackson Ward Historic District,” African American Historic Sites Database, accessed March 7, 2019, http://www.aahistoricsitesva.org/items/show/221.

 

Beito, David T. “To Advance the “Practice of Thrift and Economy”: Fraternal Societies and Social Capital, 1890-1920.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 4 (1999): 585-612. http://www.jstor.org/stable/206975.

 

Brown, Elsa Barkley. “Constructing a Life and a Community: A Partial Story of Maggie Lena Walker.” OAH Magazine of History 7, no. 4 (1993): 28-31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162909

 

Campbell, Alexia Fernández, “The Rise and Fall of Black Wall Street.”  The Atlantic, August 31, 2016.  https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/the-end-of-black-wall-street/498074/

 

Carlson, Shirley J. “Black Ideals of Womanhood in the Late Victorian Era.” The Journal of Negro History 77, no. 2 (1992): 61-73. doi:10.2307/3031483.

 

Fleming, Beatrice J. “America’s First Woman Bank President.” Negro History Bulletin 5, no. 4 (1942): 75-95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44246660.

 

Ingham, John N. “Building Businesses, Creating Communities: Residential Segregation and the Growth of African American Business in Southern Cities, 1880-1915.” The Business History Review 77, no. 4 (2003): 639-65. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30041232.

 

Marlowe, Gertrude W., A Right Worthy Grand Mission.  Washington DC: Howard University Press, 2003.

 

Ransom, Candice, Maggie L. Walker, Pioneering Banker and Community Leader.  Minneapolis, MN: Twenty First Century Books, 2009.

 

Rachleff, Peter, Black Labor in Richmond, 1865-1890.  Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

 

Simmons, Charles Willis. “Maggie Lena Walker and The Consolidated Bank and Trust Company.” Negro History Bulletin 38, no. 2 (1975): 345-49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44175323.

 

Virginia Commonwealth University Online Digital Library Collection: https://digital.library.vcu.edu/digital/collection/jwh

 

Virginia Commonwealth University Online Baist 1889 Atlas: https://web.archive.org/web/20170716002321/https://labs.library.vcu.edu/baist-atlas/

 

Winthrop, Robert P., Jackson Ward Historic District.  Richmond, VA: Richmond Dept. of Planning and Community Development, 1973.

 

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