Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal

Between 1888 and 1930, African Americans opened more than a hundred banks and thousands of other financial institutions. In Banking on Freedom, Shennette Garrett-Scott explores this rich period of black financial innovation and its transformative impact on U.S. capitalism through the story of the St. Luke Bank in Richmond, Virginia: the first and only bank run by black women.

Banking on Freedom offers an unparalleled account of how black women carved out economic, social, and political power...