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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class. It's a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. What's Up? Everyone? Welcome to this Day in

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Speaker 1: History Class, where we bring you a new tidbit from

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Speaker 1: history every day. Today is July nineteen. The day was

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Speaker 1: July eighteen sixty four. Maggie Lena Walker was born in Richmond, Virginia,

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Speaker 1: to Elizabeth Draper Mitchell and Eccles Cuthbert. Walker would become

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Speaker 1: the first woman in the US to charter and become

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Speaker 1: president of a bank. Maggie was born in the beginning

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Speaker 1: of the Reconstruction era, a year after you, as President

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Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. During this period, laws

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Speaker 1: known as black codes were being passed to restrict black

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Speaker 1: people's liberties and keep them in poverty. Lynchings and segregation

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Speaker 1: were on the rise, but there were strides and black

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Speaker 1: education and political engagement. Maggie's mother, Elizabeth, was a formerly

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Speaker 1: enslaved assistant for Elizabeth van Lou, a union spy and abolitionist.

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Speaker 1: Maggie's father, Etley's, was an Irish American whom Elizabeth had

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Speaker 1: met on the Van Lou estate. Ecle's and Elizabeth never married,

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Speaker 1: though Elizabeth married William Mitchell, who was a butler and writer.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen seventy six, William's body was found in a river.

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Speaker 1: Though his death was ruled a suicide, Maggie believed he

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Speaker 1: was murdered. Once he died, Maggie began working to help

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Speaker 1: her mom out financially. Her mom had a laundry business,

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Speaker 1: and Maggie did laundry and delivered clothes. She was socially

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Speaker 1: aware as a child, realizing the disparities between black and

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Speaker 1: white people. When she was fourteen years old, she joined

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Speaker 1: the Independent Order of St. Luke's, a black organization that

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Speaker 1: helped the sick and elderly Richmond. Maggie went to the

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Speaker 1: Lancaster School and Richmond Colored Normal School, and once she graduated,

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Speaker 1: she began teaching in the public school system. Once she

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Speaker 1: married her husband, Armstead Walker Jr. She was required to

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Speaker 1: stop teaching. Marriage bars, which were the practice of firing

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Speaker 1: married women or not hiring married women. Were not unusual

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Speaker 1: in the teaching industry at the time. Anyway, Walker continued

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Speaker 1: to be active in the Independent Order of St. Luke's

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Speaker 1: or i O. S L. The organization provided members with

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Speaker 1: disability benefits and death claims. Walker grew the I O.

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Speaker 1: S l S Treasury so that premiums cost less and

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Speaker 1: death claims were paid promptly. In she co founded the

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Speaker 1: organization's Juvenile Department, which taught black children financial responsibility and

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Speaker 1: work ethics and gave them leadership opportunities. Four years later,

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Speaker 1: Walker became the right Worthy Grand Secretary of the I O.

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Speaker 1: S L, a position she held until she died. The

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Speaker 1: organization was struggling with growing its members and was in debt.

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Speaker 1: Maggie grew its membership for a few thousand people to

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Speaker 1: more than one hundred thousand and twenty four states. She

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Speaker 1: also made it a point to hire black women and

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Speaker 1: donate to black schools for girls, encouraging more professional opportunities

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Speaker 1: for girls and women, and in August of nineteen oh one,

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Speaker 1: she called for the creation of a black bank, saying, quote,

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Speaker 1: let us put our moneys together, let us use our moneys.

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Speaker 1: Let us put our money out at usury among ourselves

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Speaker 1: and reap the benefit ourselves. Let us have a bank

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Speaker 1: that will take the nickels and turn them into dollars.

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Speaker 1: There were about twenty black banks in the US at

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Speaker 1: the time. Some but not all, white owned banks took

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Speaker 1: deposits from black customers White bankers often refused to give

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Speaker 1: loans to black people, and when they did, they were

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Speaker 1: often charged high interest rates. Besides that, white bankers and

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Speaker 1: managers feared white people's perception of black people using their banks.

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Speaker 1: Walker encouraged people to use black owned banks to keep

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Speaker 1: money in the community. In nineteen o two, she began

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Speaker 1: publishing The St. Luke Harold to encourage black people in

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Speaker 1: Richmond to start their own institutions, and in November of

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Speaker 1: nineteen oh three, after studying other banks in Richmond, she

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Speaker 1: founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank to encourage savings

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Speaker 1: and facilitate loans. By nineteen o six, savings deposits have

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Speaker 1: reached about one hundred and seventy thousand dollars. By nineteen twenty,

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Speaker 1: the bank had finance more than six hundred home loans,

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Speaker 1: and by nineteen twenty four, the bank had more than

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Speaker 1: fifty thousand members. Walker later had to merge the bank

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Speaker 1: with others, but it operated as a black owned institution

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Speaker 1: until two thousand five. Walker also opened a department store

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Speaker 1: called St. Luke's Emporium, but she had to close it

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Speaker 1: when white businesses opposed it and black people did not

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Speaker 1: shop there as much as she had expected. Besides her

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Speaker 1: banking and community building endeavors, Walker ran for Superintendent of

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Speaker 1: Public Instruction in nineteen one, though she lost. She also

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Speaker 1: fought for women's suffrage in the nineteenth Amendment to the U.

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Speaker 1: S Constitution, which prohibits the government from denying the right

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Speaker 1: to vote on the basis of sex. From nineteen o

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Speaker 1: five to nineteen thirty four, Walker lived in a Victorian

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Speaker 1: townhouse in an elite black neighborhood in jim Crow, Richmond.

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Speaker 1: She had diabetes, and in her later years she used

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Speaker 1: a wheelchair. She died from complications of diabetes in nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty four. I'm Eve Steph Coote and hopefully you know

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Speaker 1: a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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