The purchase of Utah’s Holladay Bank & Trust by a group of Black investors led by Dr. Bernice A. King and Ashley D. Bell will take place soon. As the first Black Americans to ever purchase a bank formerly owned by a white person, they are making history. After the sale, it will also be the only Black-owned bank west of Texas and in the whole Mountain West region.
The investors—among them former NFL star Dhani Jones—are purchasing their Redemption Holding Company in Atlanta. Along with King, the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, and Bell, a former White House policy adviser, Jones will also sit on the company’s advisory board.
The formerly female-led, white-owned bank has been in business since 1974 in Salt Lake City, Utah, which has one of the smallest Black populations in the nation. After receiving regulatory approval, the investors intend to change the institution’s name to Redemption Bank and concentrate more on online banking services and small business loans, particularly in underprivileged neighbourhoods.
The Hill was informed by Bell that “Black banks make the American dream possible for all Americans by deploying resources that uniquely address the financial realities of communities that have been systematically excluded, overcharged, and under-capitalized for hundreds of years.
In his final speech on April 3, 1968, King said his father “preached the imperative to accelerate Black Americans’ financial inclusion by supporting mission-driven Black banks, something he called a ‘bank-in movement.’
“After more than 50 years of adversity and slow advancement, we’re heeding our father’s call to bank in by establishing new centres of opportunity for people of colour, beginning with this Black-led bank purchase. Delivering families from the cycle of unfair financial exclusion and intergenerational poverty is what redemption is all about.
There will be 17 Black-owned banks in the United States after this transaction. That amounts to fewer than 1% of all banks covered by the FDIC.
However, according to CNBC, as many as 134 banks across the country were owned and run by African Americans between 1888 and 1934.
