Industrial Bank

Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a bank holiday on March 5, 1933, closing banks across the country until they proved financial soundness. Meanwhile, as the United States crawled out of the Great Depression, Jesse H. Mitchell and a group of black businessmen accomplished the extraordinary—they started a black-owned bank on a street known as Black Broadway in the nation's capital. Mitchell, a Howard University–educated lawyer and realtor, and his friends sold $65,000 in stock, and in the ...