Speaker 1: Welcome to Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey Hey,
Speaker 1: it's John O'Brien and this is the Money in Wealth
Speaker 1: podcast series on Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio, season three,
Speaker 1: and we're about to get popping here with a really
Speaker 1: important episode that deals with a theoretically tabot issue that
Speaker 1: I don't think needs to be which is the legacy
Speaker 1: of slavery. But not in the way in which you
Speaker 1: may think, I'm not dealing with the ethical issues or
Speaker 1: the moral issues, or you know, the responsibility issues. All
Speaker 1: those things historians have covered in much much greater degree
Speaker 1: in accuracy than I ever could. That's not my focus.
Speaker 1: My focus is, and I think this is a conservative number,
Speaker 1: the fifteen trillion dollar plus secret that was hiding in
Speaker 1: plain sight. I think you think the number is as
Speaker 1: shockingly high as forty trillion dollars when you think about
Speaker 1: missed economic opportunity. But this is the fifteen trillion dollars
Speaker 1: secret the economics of slavery in the wealth gap. Imagine
Speaker 1: it's eighteen fifty eight. A cotton planner in Mississippi has
Speaker 1: just finished his harvest bales of cotton. Thousands of pounds
Speaker 1: of it are loaded onto steamboats heading down the Mississippi River.
Speaker 1: That cotton travels south to New Orleans, the busiest cotton
Speaker 1: port in America. But the journey doesn't stop there. Merchants
Speaker 1: in New Orleans or New Orleans anew who you're from,
Speaker 1: where you're from, and how you pronounce it, arranged financing
Speaker 1: with banks in New York. Insurance companies ensure the ship
Speaker 1: the shipment. The cotton is loaded into a Transatlantic ship
Speaker 1: bound for Liverpool, England. Weeks later it arrives in the
Speaker 1: largest contentrading market.
Speaker 2: In the world.
Speaker 1: From Liverpool, it travels to textile mills in Manchester, England,
Speaker 1: where machines spin it into fabric. That fabric is sold
Speaker 1: across Europe and around the world and even back in
Speaker 1: America and the Americas. Now here's the extraordinary part about this.
Speaker 1: At every step of that journey, from the plantation to
Speaker 1: the banks, to the ships to the factories, money is
Speaker 1: being made, wealth is being gained. Plantation owners profit A
Speaker 1: little segue here, only three to five percent. Let's be
Speaker 1: liberal and say five percent of all whites in the
Speaker 1: South owned more than fifty slaves. So it was just
Speaker 1: a small portion of the European population that were slave owners.
Speaker 1: So wing to give proper context here, wasn't every white
Speaker 1: person or even most white people who owned slaves. It
Speaker 1: was the elite class. For for whomever that fact is important.
Speaker 1: Plantations owners profited, merchants profited, banks profited. Any bank that's
Speaker 1: older than one hundred and seventy five years old had
Speaker 1: a stake and a hand in all likelihood the slave trade.
Speaker 1: Because they took back they put loans on plantations and properties,
Speaker 1: and part of that security for that loan, part of
Speaker 1: the collateral was the barn and the land and the machinery,
Speaker 1: and part, unfortunately of the machinery were slaves. So you'll
Speaker 1: find banks that are certainly two hundred years old, the
Speaker 1: oldest banks in America, who have human beings on their books.
Speaker 1: Don't blame the leadership of the day had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it. But it is a sad fact that
Speaker 1: everybody was involved in this business. And this only gets
Speaker 1: deeper and more interesting. And for those who are interested
Speaker 1: in blame, there's enough to go around. By the way
Speaker 1: you had, I mean, how do you think the slaves
Speaker 1: got from the central of Africa to the coast right.
Speaker 1: It was blacks that are capturing other blacks, and tribes
Speaker 1: didn't know they were selling them the slavery. But my
Speaker 1: point is that tribes captured are the tribes, and they
Speaker 1: didn't know what they were doing, but they some of
Speaker 1: them sold them unconsciously.
Speaker 2: In a slavery.
Speaker 1: You had Indians and in India slave traders, you had
Speaker 1: Arab slave traders. You had I'm sure Asian. I don't
Speaker 1: have that fact handy, but I'm sure they were involved
Speaker 1: in some way, and you could put quotation marks and
Speaker 1: say that Asians were also related to Indians and certainly Europeans,
Speaker 1: of course, I'm going back to the Asian example for
Speaker 1: a minute. It was some mean it hit my brain
Speaker 1: about why there might be a natural or unnatural connection there.
Speaker 1: But the point is everybody was in the business, so
Speaker 1: to speak. It was unfortunately rather normal at that time,
Speaker 1: and people just wanted to profit from it moral socide.
Speaker 1: So insurance companies profited after banks, textile manufacture is profited.
Speaker 1: So my point of the racial thing was it wasn't
Speaker 1: really racial. It wasn't as I keep saying black or white,
Speaker 1: as in rais or red or blue, and as in
Speaker 1: politics today it was green, and right, it's always been green.
Speaker 1: We just need to turn bad capitalism into good capitalism. Right,
Speaker 1: bad debt financing slaves into good debt financing the purchase
Speaker 1: of companies and growing industries, and and and us going
Speaker 1: from being an asset to owning assets, and us being
Speaker 1: African Americans. My second great grandfather and second great grandmother
Speaker 1: there were slaves. My grandfather on my father's side was
Speaker 1: a sharecropper RB.
Speaker 2: Smith.
Speaker 1: My next book, Capitalism for All, lays all of this
Speaker 1: out about where do we go from here, which was
Speaker 1: doctor King's last book before he was assassinated. So banks profit,
Speaker 1: insurance companies profited, textile manufactures profited. Entire global economy was
Speaker 1: on the move, all connected to one shipment of cotton.
Speaker 1: Let that sink in, and almost all of that cotton
Speaker 1: was picked by enslaved labor. By eighteen sixty, cotton made
Speaker 1: up more than half of all American exports. I'll say
Speaker 1: that again, and I'll say it a little slower so
Speaker 1: it sticks. By eighteen sixty, cotton made up more than
Speaker 1: half of all American exports, and the market value of
Speaker 1: enslaved people had grown to three billion dollars In eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty money. Just for context, that's more valuable than all
Speaker 1: of the currency of that day, all of the precious
Speaker 1: metals of that day, all of the railroads of that day,
Speaker 1: all of the banks of that day, all of the
Speaker 1: insurance companies of that day, hold on together the largest
Speaker 1: financial asset in the United States. Enslave people, free talented labor.
Speaker 1: I say talented because some would have you believed that
Speaker 1: slaves or some lazy are blacks or lazy they would
Speaker 1: say today, but they would say back then, slaves were lazy,
Speaker 1: they were any human, they were untalented. No one goes
Speaker 1: halfway around the world at enormous expense as an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: or a business builder to take a risk on useless assets.
Speaker 1: You do that because you have no choice, or you
Speaker 1: believe is the best choice. And we were agricultural geniuses
Speaker 1: who could take dead soil and bring it back to life.
Speaker 1: And where was the cotton rooted best? Where did it
Speaker 1: grow best? And hot, humid soil hard to cultivate and
Speaker 1: bring back to life? The Caribbean, Latin America, but specifically
Speaker 1: the best area it appeared the southern states of the
Speaker 1: United States of America. And my poor white brothers and
Speaker 1: sisters then from Europe who were brought here as indentured
Speaker 1: servants along and put aside along with blacks. By the way,
Speaker 1: there were white indigent servants as well, there were blacks.
Speaker 1: The first indigent service were black and white. That's a
Speaker 1: whole other podcast I did explaining how race is literally
Speaker 1: made up in America in the last four hundred years
Speaker 1: and sorry made it race. The racial word white eight
Speaker 1: was literally made up in a world is five billion
Speaker 1: years old, and human existence which goes back you know,
Speaker 1: you know, modern human existence a few thousand, a couple
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years old, and then you know primitive human
Speaker 1: couple hundred you know, let's just say, let's just be
Speaker 1: easy to say a couple of million years ago, right,
Speaker 1: but and enlightenment three thousand years ago, right, Traders six
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. But somehow in the global world the
Speaker 1: racial word white was created four hundred years ago. In America.
Speaker 1: It was for commercial reasons, by the way. It was
Speaker 1: to separate blacks and whites who were getting along, because
Speaker 1: they could not have them be friends, because they said,
Speaker 1: you can have a race ride, you cannot have a
Speaker 1: class ride, because we're the class so you want to
Speaker 1: know an answer is something you keep following the money,
Speaker 1: and nine times out of ten you take the emotions
Speaker 1: out of it, by the way, and follow the money,
Speaker 1: you'll get your answer. So Africans who became African Americans
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand slaves who turned into four million because
Speaker 1: they cultivated this group, because they were so profitable, they
Speaker 1: were the only group that could take this debt. So
Speaker 1: let bring it back to life and produce these crops
Speaker 1: of gold, cotton, tobacco, et cetera. Anyway, the largest financial
Speaker 1: asset in the United States was, without a question, in
Speaker 1: slave labor, the equivalent of ten to fifteen trillion dollars today.
Speaker 1: Some would argue you twenty one trillion dollars. I'm giving
Speaker 1: you the conservative number, which means that to understand wealth
Speaker 1: in American today, you first have to understand how wealth
Speaker 1: was built in America yesterday. So today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the economics of slavery from a non emotional,
Speaker 1: non blaming, non polarizing perspective. Just the math. I like
Speaker 1: math because it doesn't have an opinion. Again, my quoting
Speaker 1: my friend Melody Hopson, who's that that's her quote, that's
Speaker 1: a great quote, very illuminative. This is a story that
Speaker 1: Americans were never talked in school, not to assign blame,
Speaker 1: as I said, but to understand the system, because once
Speaker 1: you understand the system, you can learn how to win
Speaker 1: in it. So welcome back to money and wealth, everybody,
Speaker 1: And today I'm gonna talk to you about something that
Speaker 1: most Americans were never talked, not because it isn't important,
Speaker 1: but because it's uncomfortable. Today we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the economics of slavery. Now, let me be clear before
Speaker 1: we get into this. This episode is not about blame.
Speaker 1: I'm said this a half dozen times and when I
Speaker 1: underscore and cause people are clipping this in segments. Is
Speaker 1: not about blame as in a distraction. It's not about
Speaker 1: making anybody feel guilty. Even it's not about victimhood. I'm
Speaker 1: no victim. I'm a victor and so are you this
Speaker 1: episode and certainly my forefathers and four mothers, my family
Speaker 1: who weren't slaves themselves. My second grand grandmother left slavery,
Speaker 1: left escaped slavery, and went on to buy a house,
Speaker 1: didn't have a mortgage on it, had a border renter,
Speaker 1: which means she was she turned into a capitalist It
Speaker 1: is such an inspiring story. My second grand grandfather, George
Speaker 1: Young on my father's side, that was my mother's side
Speaker 1: of the lady on my father's side, went on to
Speaker 1: answer Abram Lincoln's call for the Emancipation Proclamation and went
Speaker 1: on to protect the people of Memphis, Tennessee and the
Speaker 1: black regimen. One of seven thousand black officers. He was
Speaker 1: protecting people who were not really all that throat about
Speaker 1: protecting him. So there's my social justice bones and my
Speaker 1: capitalist bones all in one story. So this episode's about
Speaker 1: understanding the economics of America, because if you want to
Speaker 1: understand wealth in America today, you have to understand how
Speaker 1: wealth was built yesterday. And once you understand this story,
Speaker 1: we can talk about how to build wealth going forward.
Speaker 1: Let me start with the statistic that shocks me and
Speaker 1: will shock you the first time you hear it. In
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, just before the Civil War, the single largest
Speaker 1: financial asset in the United States of America was enslaved people.
Speaker 1: And the wealthiest city in America was Notacha's, Mississippi. I'll
Speaker 1: repeat that. The wealthiest city in America, and some would
Speaker 1: say the wealthiest city in the world at that time
Speaker 1: was Notch's Mississippi small footnote. Part of Wall Street started
Speaker 1: in Montgomery, Alabama. That's where some very well known investment houses,
Speaker 1: including names you would know today, began there because that's
Speaker 1: where the money was being made. So the largest asset
Speaker 1: was not railroads, It was not banks, or land, or
Speaker 1: factories or even just sort of talented human capital, human beings.
Speaker 1: It was enslaved people of Historians estimate nearly four million
Speaker 1: enslaved people in America had a combined market value of
Speaker 1: about three billion dollars in eighteen sixty. Now that number
Speaker 1: might not sound enormous today we mentioned a billion.
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound enormous.
Speaker 1: We're living in strange times, by the way, But when
Speaker 1: economists compared to the size of the economy at that time,
Speaker 1: it would have been somewhere between ten and fifteen trillion
Speaker 1: dollars a day conservatively, dude, And giving you some context
Speaker 1: for that, the US economy is about thirty trillion, with
Speaker 1: the largest economy in the world, the market value of
Speaker 1: the stock market, which is a fifty trillion plus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a big number, right, And this is you know,
Speaker 1: let's just say half of the US GDP. So the
Speaker 1: largest concentration of wealth in America in eighteen sixty was
Speaker 1: an asset, if you want to call it.
Speaker 2: That quotation marks worth the.
Speaker 1: Equivalent of say, fifteen trillion dollars today. That means enslave
Speaker 1: people represented more wealth than all the railroads, all the factories,
Speaker 1: or the banks in the country combined. And here's the
Speaker 1: part that most people don't know. And slave people were
Speaker 1: treated not just as labor, but as a capital asset.
Speaker 1: They could be mortgaged, ensured, us as loan collateral, bought
Speaker 1: and sold in financial markets, basically a form of what
Speaker 1: we call today's securitization. This is why historians today say
Speaker 1: something important. Slavery wasn't just a social system, it was
Speaker 1: an economic system. And I'll go one step further and
Speaker 1: tell you that the Civil War was an economic dispute.
Speaker 1: It was the South resisting northern economic domination. The North
Speaker 1: was moving to industrialization, factories and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: the immigrants of that day, the left behind and the
Speaker 1: thrown aways of that day who came in America, the Polish,
Speaker 1: the Italians, the Jews, whoever you want to think about
Speaker 1: of that day, who were not considered sort of the
Speaker 1: upper class. They were coming in and trying to strive
Speaker 1: and grow and build things. But they're heading north along
Speaker 1: with industrializations. So those economies were growing, and the Homestead
Speaker 1: Act gave land away heading west, and so the West
Speaker 1: and the North were growing.
Speaker 2: In the South was.
Speaker 1: Stuck in an old model of slavery, even though it
Speaker 1: was where half of all millionaires, more than half of
Speaker 1: all millionaires lived in the South, specifically Mississippi. Do you
Speaker 1: know Mississippi was the wealthiest state in America before the
Speaker 1: Civil War. It's the poorer state in America today. And
Speaker 1: I've got family there, so I want them to come
Speaker 1: up from where they are now. And that's why again
Speaker 1: written this book Capitalism for All that's coming out soon,
Speaker 1: that hopefully business plan for all of us. Now, let's
Speaker 1: talk about cotton, because cotton was the engine of that
Speaker 1: economic system. By eighteen sixty, cotton made up about sixty
Speaker 1: percent of all US ex sports. Think about that, more
Speaker 1: than half of everything sold to the world came from
Speaker 1: one product, cotton, and almost all of that cotton was
Speaker 1: grown and processed by enslaved labor. In fact, the United
Speaker 1: States produced roughly three quarters of the world's cotton supply,
Speaker 1: which means the global textile industry, the biggest manufacturing industry
Speaker 1: on Earth at that time, dependent on American cotton.
Speaker 2: They call it king cotton.
Speaker 1: Actually it was the gold of that time, the platinum
Speaker 1: of that time, the ai of that time, if you
Speaker 1: want to call it that, artificial intelligence, the capital market,
Speaker 1: king or queen, and that cotton came primarily from places
Speaker 1: like Mississippi, where my family is from, Alabama, where my
Speaker 1: family is from, Louisiana, where Ambassador Andrew Young's family is from,
Speaker 1: and Georgia, where again my family is from. This is
Speaker 1: why people at the time called cotton again king cotton.
Speaker 1: Cotton wasn't just agriculture. Cotton was the energy source of
Speaker 1: the global economy. It was the oil of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: And that cotton economy created enormous wealth, which leads to
Speaker 1: another surprising fact. Most Americans today think of Mississippi as
Speaker 1: one of the poorest state states in the South, and
Speaker 1: really it's the poorest state arguably in America, in the country.
Speaker 1: But this fact is worth underscoring again. In eighteen sixty,
Speaker 1: Mississippi was actually the richest state in America per capita.
Speaker 1: Let that sink in the richest state. Why because the
Speaker 1: Mississippi Delta produced some of the most profitable cotton plantations
Speaker 1: in the world. Some plantation owners controlled thousands of acres
Speaker 1: of land and hundreds of enslaved workers. They were even
Speaker 1: a town called as I mentioned earlier. But I'm an
Speaker 1: underscore here Nachez, Mississippi Natcchez, if you'd like to look
Speaker 1: it up for yourself. At that time, Nachez was one
Speaker 1: of the highest concentration of millionaires in the United States
Speaker 1: of America, the richest city in America. But there's something
Speaker 1: important to understand here. That wealth was extremely concentrated. Only
Speaker 1: a small percentage of white Southerners actually owned and slaved people,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, and an even smaller percentage own
Speaker 1: large plantations. So it's no different than the uber wealth
Speaker 1: you see today. It's just the uber wealth we see today,
Speaker 1: I believe is more responsible, more authentic, more I mean,
Speaker 1: for what you ever think about it, it's they're not
Speaker 1: engaging in slavery at least not the folks I do
Speaker 1: business with are not out in public. It's not a
Speaker 1: mainstream industry. No legitimate business person of any ilk is
Speaker 1: doing that today. So we have made progress from immoral
Speaker 1: ends to at least neutral ends, if not moral ends.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to move us into a moral economy. Good capitalism,
Speaker 1: our capitalism can serve all of God's children and take
Speaker 1: the bottom third and lift them up and put the
Speaker 1: ladder to the bottom and so you can climb to
Speaker 1: the top. So that folks don't resent rich people. They
Speaker 1: want to become one. Back to the story. So when
Speaker 1: we talk about southern wealth in eighteen sixty, were really
Speaker 1: talking about the wealth of a very small elite class.
Speaker 1: But that elite class controlled massive economic power. Now here's
Speaker 1: where the story gets even more interesting because the cotton
Speaker 1: economy wasn't just Southern, it was global. Let me explain
Speaker 1: how the system worked. Cotton grown on plantations Mississippi or
Speaker 1: Alabama would be shipped down the Mississippi River again the
Speaker 1: New Orleans as an example for the New Orleans, it
Speaker 1: would be exported to Liverpool, England. Liverpool was the financial
Speaker 1: center of the global cotton trade. If you didn't know that.
Speaker 1: By the way, did you know that Birmingham, Alabama was
Speaker 1: named after Birmingham, England because it was an industrial center
Speaker 1: in the world of Birmingham, England for cotton and Birmingham
Speaker 1: Alabama was an industrial center in America for slavery and cotton,
Speaker 1: and you know railroads ran through it, just like you
Speaker 1: know in Birmingham anyway. How interesting today the Mayor of
Speaker 1: Birmingham is a black man who is doing actually what
Speaker 1: Woffin Woodfin, who's a very good man and doing a
Speaker 1: very good job. I think he just won his third
Speaker 1: re election, which is unprecedented in a very diverse place
Speaker 1: like Birmingham. In operation hope. I don't think he would
Speaker 1: mind me saying this is responsible. Well, he's responsible for
Speaker 1: him becoming a homeowner, but we facilitated it through our
Speaker 1: open side program that Mayor Randall Woodfin uh uh partnered
Speaker 1: with in the for the employees of the City of
Speaker 1: Birmingham full circle and through and with a mortgage through
Speaker 1: Region's Bank, our partner in that area for hope inside
Speaker 1: good capitalism, doing well by doing good. I think he's
Speaker 1: a first homeowner, homeowner in his family and now a father.
Speaker 1: So we can have rainbows after storms. In fact, as
Speaker 1: a scientific fact, you cannot have a rainbow without a
Speaker 1: storm first. So it would be exported to Liverpool, England.
Speaker 1: Liverpool was the financial center of the global cotton trade
Speaker 1: and from Liverpool cotton went to textile mills and Manchester
Speaker 1: and other industrial cities in Britain. Those mills turned cotton
Speaker 1: into fabric okay, and that fabric was sold.
Speaker 2: All over the world. But there was another piece in
Speaker 2: the system.
Speaker 1: Finance banks in New York finance the cotton trade investment
Speaker 1: banks in places like Montgomery, Alabama, facilitated portions of that
Speaker 1: financing activity. Specifically as relates to cotton banks in New
Speaker 1: York finance, the cotton trade insurance companies insured shipments. Shipping
Speaker 1: companies transported goods, merchants issued credit. Some of the early
Speaker 1: financial firms that later became part of Wall Street actually
Speaker 1: began in the cotton economy. Let's give you some examples.
Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers started in Montgomery, Alabama as a
Speaker 1: cotton trading business. Cotton was so valuable that in some
Speaker 1: cases it actually functioned like currency. So when we talk
Speaker 1: about slavery, we're also talking about global capitalism. Cotton plantations,
Speaker 1: New York finands, British factories, global markets all connected. Now
Speaker 1: here's another economic reality that rarely gets discussed. When slavery
Speaker 1: ended in eighteen sixty and by the way I want
Speaker 1: to commend. There's one particular bank. I'm thinking about two
Speaker 1: banks where they acknowledged their history where they had some
Speaker 1: involvement with slavery. So the precursor to truest Bank, Sun Trust,
Speaker 1: the precursor to all those. I think it was Trust.
Speaker 1: I think it was Trust Company anyway. I don't know
Speaker 1: the name before Sun Truls that, I can't remember it
Speaker 1: off the top of my head. But the CEO there,
Speaker 1: Bill Rogers, owned this history and didn't have to. I'm
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent sure that my friend Jamie Diamond and
Speaker 1: JP Morgan Chase owned their history because there are records
Speaker 1: of enslave people in those banks records as well, And
Speaker 1: there are many others who would fit this criteria, and
Speaker 1: the leaders have stepped up and acknowledged in most of
Speaker 1: those cases. Now here's another economic reality that really gets discussed.
Speaker 2: Also.
Speaker 1: When slavery ended in eighteen sixty five, the loss to
Speaker 1: the South was almost complete. The South loss's largest asset class.
Speaker 1: Almost overnight, the three billion dollar slave asset market disappeared.
Speaker 1: If you want a joke about it's not but you
Speaker 1: wonder why people are upset. You know, in the traditional South,
Speaker 1: you lose fifteen trillion dollars overnight. See how you're feeling,
Speaker 1: whether you're moral or not, it's it is the children.
Speaker 1: And those people are like, I didn't do anything about this.
Speaker 1: Why am I broke?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Why can't I get my carriage? Mercedes? Mercedes was a carriage,
Speaker 1: was a Mercedes that day? Why can't I get my
Speaker 1: farmhouse mansion? The farmhouse was a mansion of that day,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Why can't I get
Speaker 1: my horse as in horsepower, you know, the ferrari of
Speaker 1: that day? Because with my daddy and my granddaddy did
Speaker 1: ain't nothing to do with that. So the economy collapses.
Speaker 1: That collapse devastated the Southern economy. But something else happened
Speaker 1: to four million newly freed people entered the economy with
Speaker 1: no capital at all. In fact, they had no land,
Speaker 1: they had no financial assets, they had no access to credit.
Speaker 1: They it was even illegal to teach them to read
Speaker 1: before the end of slavery. So now you're walking in
Speaker 1: with no literacy. And there was a by extension, of course,
Speaker 1: no access to banks. And you may or may not know,
Speaker 1: but I'm tied in a little bit here. I'll perate
Speaker 1: you Hope's tied in a little bit here to this history.
Speaker 1: We went into the Treasury Department in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: It was twenty fifteen we started this conversation. I'm wann
Speaker 1: thank jenn Ay Rosco on my team for pointing me
Speaker 1: in this direction, and in black women in the Treasury
Speaker 1: Department for encouraging me to pursue this. But we ultimately
Speaker 1: got the United States government to rename the US Treasury
Speaker 1: annexed building that's across from the Treasury Department, it's across
Speaker 1: from the White House, across from Lafont Plaza. We got
Speaker 1: them to rename that the Freedmen's Bank Building in honor
Speaker 1: of freed slaves who put all their money in a
Speaker 1: bank charter to teach free slaves about money after the
Speaker 1: Civil War. The only American citizen or to trigger the
Speaker 1: renaming or inspire the renaming of a bank on the
Speaker 1: White House campus in US history through our work at
Speaker 1: Operation Hope and my instigation and inspiration by Jenney Roscoe
Speaker 1: and these black women at Treasury who encouraged me to
Speaker 1: do it, and Secretary Jack lou made it happen, along
Speaker 1: with others who were supportive This was during the Obama administration.
Speaker 2: And it sits to this day.
Speaker 1: It stands to this day as attribute and the testimony
Speaker 1: to unfinished business which we are in our own way
Speaker 1: at operation of trying to finish. And that was that
Speaker 1: light legislation for the Freeman's Bank was signed in the
Speaker 1: law on March third, eighteen sixty five, on the last
Speaker 1: day of Abraham Lincoln's first term, after he won re election,
Speaker 1: in part, in large part because of the extended history
Speaker 1: of Atlanta, because the last battle on the war, the
Speaker 1: Civil War was at the Battle of Atlanta, where the
Speaker 1: Union army burned Atlanta to the ground to cut off
Speaker 1: the infrastructure, and the momentum and the confidence of the
Speaker 1: Confederate army which worked, and the march to the Sea
Speaker 1: that followed that had former slave people now forming and
Speaker 1: slave people following Secretary of Wars General Stanton and into freedom.
Speaker 1: And they went to Savannah, Georgia. In general the general
Speaker 1: who was sent there, I believe, I believe it was
Speaker 1: General Sherman, negotiate with twenty former black slaves for you
Speaker 1: know what they wanted after slavery, and they said, we
Speaker 1: want land, we want to do for ourselves and that
Speaker 1: they had to forty acres and forty acres and a mule,
Speaker 1: and they worked it so hard they said, my god,
Speaker 1: there's so industrials.
Speaker 2: Give them a mule.
Speaker 1: That was January February eighteen sixty five. March eighteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: here comes the Bank, the Freedom Is Bank, charted to
Speaker 1: teach free slaves about money. Abraham Lincoln promises blacks the
Speaker 1: right to vote, and Booth said that's a bridge too far.
Speaker 1: You'll never give another free to another speech, and he
Speaker 1: was assassinated April eighteen sixty five, a month after he
Speaker 1: signed the Freeman's Bureau Actor, which gave created infrastructure, hospital, schools, etc.
Speaker 1: For newly enslaved newly free enslaved formally enslaved people, including
Speaker 1: the bank that then Frederick Douglass went on to try
Speaker 1: to run after Lincoln's assassination, and unfortunate without Lincoln as
Speaker 1: a protector, the bank failed in eighteen and it failed
Speaker 1: in total in eighteen seventy seven. Although it was failing
Speaker 1: for some time after, it was gained by mainstream interests
Speaker 1: in Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: Who used it as their.
Speaker 1: Own personal piggy bank, along with local cashiers in offices
Speaker 1: throughout the country who were financially illiterate. That just proves
Speaker 1: good intentions alone doesn't matter. So there was no access
Speaker 1: to the land, or financial assets, or education or credit.
Speaker 1: I think about what that means economically for generations. Black
Speaker 1: labor had helped produce enormous wealth, but ownership of that
Speaker 1: wealth belonged to someone else. In fact, even after the
Speaker 1: forty Acres and Mule when General when President Johnson I
Speaker 1: believe his name is took over after Abraham Lincoln, but
Speaker 1: a Southern segregation is he gave the land. He reversed
Speaker 1: forty acres and the mule within two or three years
Speaker 1: and gave that land back to the segregation of his
Speaker 1: families who owned it before. So if you wonder why
Speaker 1: you have this wealth gap today, I'm telling you part
Speaker 1: of that stories not that people didn't work hard. You
Speaker 1: can run really fast, but if you're on quicksand it's
Speaker 1: hard to get traction, that matters.
Speaker 2: This is why.
Speaker 1: Economic opportunity after the Civil War became so important. The
Speaker 1: first reconstruction, second reconstruction was the Civil rights movement. I
Speaker 1: believe we're in the third reconstruction today. I covered that
Speaker 1: also in my book. That's coming out now capitalism for all,
Speaker 1: but many of those opportunities were limited, limited by black codes,
Speaker 1: share cropping systems, segregation, red lining. Red lining happened in
Speaker 1: the in earnest. It happened by people. Think it happened
Speaker 1: by banks. Nope, it happened banks discriminated against it, for sure.
Speaker 1: But it was the federal government that actually created red lining,
Speaker 1: the FHA and I can't make this up, and it
Speaker 1: literally sent a signal to banks that we're not ensuring
Speaker 1: areas that have these red lines, that are in these
Speaker 1: red lines, red marked areas, so go invest someplace else
Speaker 1: will ensure those. So that was the suburbs and other areas,
Speaker 1: and so they are urban areas where blacks had migrated
Speaker 1: to were considered red lined and had no gotten, no
Speaker 1: access to capital. So the banks don't like risk, and
Speaker 1: they were uncomfortable blacks to begin with, but they certainly
Speaker 1: wen't going to do it if it weren't incentivized to lend.
Speaker 1: And so they lent where people look like them, where
Speaker 1: areas where the mortgages were guaranteed by the federal government.
Speaker 1: Think about that. It really is common sense why they
Speaker 1: did what they did and didn't do Why they did,
Speaker 1: didn't and didn't do what they didn't do. You don't
Speaker 1: have to be a racist to make that decision, although
Speaker 1: being a racist probably helped make those decisions and back
Speaker 1: those In those days, banks were family owned and privately
Speaker 1: And do you know, by the way, there was currencies,
Speaker 1: like hundreds of currencies. It wasn't a US currency to
Speaker 1: you know, unified US currency at that time. This was
Speaker 1: you know, in eighteen hundreds you had you know, the
Speaker 1: Bank of Joe's currency and Jackson Grocery Stores currency.
Speaker 2: It was a mess. Anyway.
Speaker 1: All of this affected access to capital and ownership for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. So now let's bring this conversation to today,
Speaker 1: because history only matters if it helps us understand the present.
Speaker 1: The lesson here is not about victimhood. It's not about blame.
Speaker 1: It's about ownership. A lesson is about ownership. For centuries,
Speaker 1: black labor produced wealth but did not control the capital.
Speaker 1: Which is why today I often say something simple, the
Speaker 1: next civil rights movement in America must be about money
Speaker 1: and wealth. That financial literacy is the civil rights issue
Speaker 1: of this generation. If you don't know better, you can't
Speaker 1: do better. In a blind town or one eyed man's
Speaker 1: king if you don't. If it is an old Southern saying,
Speaker 1: no matter how much I love you, my son or
Speaker 1: my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I can only
Speaker 1: give you my own ignorance. And so out of love
Speaker 1: we pass down bad habits from generation to generation. So
Speaker 1: it's not the agenda to day is not just about jobs.
Speaker 1: It's not just about wages. It's about ownership. About credit scores,
Speaker 1: seven hundred credit scores plus to be particular, to be specific,
Speaker 1: because the computer just says, yes, it's seven hundred plus
Speaker 1: us when you go to it at midnight to ask
Speaker 1: for a thirty thousand dollars loan with a job. It's
Speaker 1: about entrepreneurship, is about is about home ownership, It's about investment.
Speaker 1: It's about mastering artificial intelligence and upskilling for the jobs
Speaker 1: of the future which haven't come yet. But that's a
Speaker 1: different podcast for the other day. Because the real power
Speaker 1: in capitalism is ownership of assets, and that asset starts
Speaker 1: with you. That is why financial literacy matters. This is
Speaker 1: why credit score literacy matters. This is why entrepreneurship literacy matters.
Speaker 1: This is why AI literacy matters. The untapped economic power
Speaker 1: of you. Let me close with this thought. In eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty the most valuable asset in the American economy was
Speaker 1: enslaved people, human potential that was exploited but not empowered. Today,
Speaker 1: the greatest untapped asset in America is still human potential.
Speaker 1: But now we have an opportunity to do something different
Speaker 1: to unlock that potential through education, through financial literacy, through
Speaker 1: access to capital, true capital access. Not a program, but
Speaker 1: a platform for prosperity, because not people. Because people feel
Speaker 1: bad or guiltier, feel sorry for you. Know, they see
Speaker 1: you as a market opportunity and want to benefit from
Speaker 1: you in fair exchange is no robbery. I don't want
Speaker 1: to hand out. I want to hand up. I want
Speaker 1: the James Brown version of affirmative action. Open the door,
Speaker 1: I'll get it my dang self. Can I get an amen?
Speaker 1: This is about ownership, agency, own This is about how
Speaker 1: you feel about yourself. Because we're not human beings. I
Speaker 1: believe having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having
Speaker 1: a human experience. Energy matters. Your view of yourself matters.
Speaker 1: The market brand of you facing the world well, how
Speaker 1: they see you matters. That's why I'm trying to reset
Speaker 1: the record. So people, institutions, companies, individuals see you as
Speaker 1: an asset waiting to be born, not a liability that
Speaker 1: to be ignored or avoided at all costs. Watch your brand,
Speaker 1: your personal brand, your family brand, your community brand, watch
Speaker 1: your brand.
Speaker 2: Your reputation.
Speaker 1: I'll always said when I leave a room, and I
Speaker 1: want anybody to say, but I like that guy, But
Speaker 1: I respect that guy. But I'd love to do business
Speaker 1: with John O'Briant. But you never want to butt of
Speaker 1: any material substance next to your name.
Speaker 2: You want to end.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm all about inclusive economics, and that's why
Speaker 1: inclusive capitalism is important. That's why good capitalism is important.
Speaker 1: Doing well and doing good. Doing well by doing good,
Speaker 1: expanding the ownership society is to quote my friend Stephanie rule,
Speaker 1: like expanding the table and adding a chair doesn't hurt anybody,
Speaker 1: doesn't take anything from anybody. It grows the table, it
Speaker 1: grows the economy, It expands our ownership society. We're not
Speaker 1: tearing down a system. We're making sure everybody has a
Speaker 1: stake in it, so no one wants to tear it up.
Speaker 1: People tell me, oh, I hate rich people. No, you
Speaker 1: don't you hate rich people until you become rich. What
Speaker 1: you hate is a game system. What you hate is
Speaker 1: the system that is rigged. No matter how hard you work,
Speaker 1: you can't get buy or get ahead. People resent that system,
Speaker 1: and that's what we should want to refine, and we
Speaker 1: should want to reset. And we have to do that
Speaker 1: in part by upgrading our own software.
Speaker 2: So no one has.
Speaker 1: Even at least a good excuse to leave us out
Speaker 1: of this party called success.
Speaker 2: So this is John.
Speaker 1: O'Brien and this has been Money and Wealth of the
Speaker 1: Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio platform, season three. I
Speaker 1: want you to remember something. Understanding money is not just
Speaker 1: about the numbers. It's about understanding the systems that create opportunity.
Speaker 1: And once you understand that system, you can learn how
Speaker 1: to win in it. I want you, all of you, black, white, red, brown,
Speaker 1: everybody to win that scale.
Speaker 2: Let's finish Doctor King's und finished work.
Speaker 1: He was working with poor whites and poor everybody else
Speaker 1: in the Poor People's Campaign.
Speaker 2: He said, we're here.
Speaker 1: I'm here to redeem the soul of America from the
Speaker 1: triple to evils of war, racism, and poverty.
Speaker 2: He knew that.
Speaker 1: If America couldn't be great and sustainable unless everybody had
Speaker 1: a seat at that table called opportunity. Let's finish that work.
Speaker 1: Let's on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America
Speaker 1: recast the software, upgrade our software as an individual, as institutions,
Speaker 1: and as a nation, to look forward in a way
Speaker 1: that gives everybody an opportunity to fulfill their God given
Speaker 1: potential in this system.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, am bachelor.
Speaker 1: Andrew Young has a quote he's in that balcony when
Speaker 1: doctor King was assassinated in sixty eight. He has a quote,
Speaker 1: my mentor, Andrew Young, our global spokesman in operation, I
Speaker 1: hope to live in a system of free enterprise, and
Speaker 1: not to understand the rules of free enterprise be the
Speaker 1: very definition of slavery. So let's ungame this system. Let's
Speaker 1: get you the tools to succeed. Coincidence is God's way
Speaker 1: remaining anonymous. So on a two hundred and fifty the
Speaker 1: anniversary of America is also the one hundredth anniversary of
Speaker 1: Black History Month. Thank you, mister Woodson. Yeah, we're sitting
Speaker 1: in a moment in history. What we're gonna do about it?
Speaker 1: I'll see you next time. Money and Wealth with John
Speaker 1: O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.