The woman who turned nickels into dollars
“No person is your friend who demands your silence and denies your growth.”
“I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but a laundry basket practically on my head. I have come up on the rough side of the mountain.”
— Maggie Lena Walker
By Stephan Drew
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Most of us are quite familiar with banks and the banking system.
We make our regular deposits and withdrawals and, when the need arises, we borrow money for the major things that we desperately need in life. The staff at our financial institutions are very friendly while they serve us. They smile as they ask about our health, our families and do almost anything they can to help us fulfill our monetary needs.
But, for many of us, this is a new sensation.
There was a time when people of color did not have access to banking services and had no chance of economic success. That all changed over 100 years ago when one woman stepped on the scene.
Maggie Lena Draper was born July 15, 1864, when the Civil War was in its final days. She took her first breath in Richmond, Va., the capital of the Confederacy. Her mother, Elizabeth Draper, was a former slave who worked in the home of Elizabeth Van Lew, an abolitionist and war spy.
Her father, Eccles Cuthbert, was an Irish-born Confederate soldier who worked at the Chimborazo military hospital. Maggie had her father’s light skin and hazel-colored eyes but, to locals, she was “colored.”
Her father was not a major influence in her life and was never around, although he later wrote for the New York Herald. Elizabeth married a servant in the Van Lew mansion but he was killed when Maggie was 11 years old and her mother had to take in washing to make ends meet.
After the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, there was hope that life would be better for African-Americans. However, this was not to be. With Jim Crow laws in place and early segregation attempts in effect, the phrase “separate but equal” meant that life was little better than it was before the war ended.
Most blacks could not own property, change jobs without a (white man’s) reference, or even move across town to a nicer residential area. Maggie completed her education at 16, receiving valuable training at one of the new schools opened for blacks in the South.
As she later described, “They guided our childish feet, trained our restless hands and created within our youthful souls an unquenchable search for knowledge and an undying ambition to BE something and to DO something.”
She carried this burning desire to succeed throughout the rest of her life, and was determined to help others achieve their dreams as well. She noticed that most people of color were not taught about economics, saving or handling money, or any type of financial planning at all.
Maggie Lena Walker, (July 15, 1864 – December 15, 1934)
Teacher, Wife, Mother, Bank President, Department
Store Owner, Publisher, Civil Rights Advocate.
Maggie was determined that all that should change. Several societies sprang up throughout the country to help those languishing in poverty and the Independent Order of St. Luke in Richmond was one such society.
Maggie began teaching for $35 a month and working for the St. Luke organization and was promoted to executive secretary. During this time, she helped them to establish a newspaper, a printing press, an insurance company and a college education fund.
But she wanted to do more to make blacks financially independent. She knew that, when you depend on someone else for your economic security, you are still a slave in one form or another. So, in 1905, she decided to convince the black community to pool their money and use it to better their lives.
As she told them, “WE need a savings bank, chartered, offered and run by the men and women of this order. Let us have a bank that will take nickels and turn them into dollars.”
She championed the cause of self-sufficient economic empowerment for all African-Americans and she joined other black leaders in advocating entrepreneurship as a path to social freedom. Customers could deposit a nickel a week into their accounts and the assets soon began to multiply.
On its first day, St. Luke Penny Savings Bank took in more than $9,000 in deposits, including one for 31 cents. In less than 10 years, the bank had over $300,000 in assets (over $8.5 million in today’s dollars) and, by 1920, they had helped build or purchase over 650 homes for people of color.
She employed only black women in the bank and her department store because it was hardest for them to find work. When the stock market collapsed in 1929, most financial institutions around the country were crippled. But not St. Luke Savings.
They had enough in reserve to absorb all the other local black-owned banks and became Consolidated Bank and Trust, with assets over $450,000 (approximately $12.7 million today).
The bank is still headquartered exactly where she started it, Richmond, Va. She married a bricklayer, Armstead Walker Jr., in 1886 and had four children, Mary Polly Walker, Russell Eccles Talmadge Walker, Armstead Mitchell Walker and Melvin DeWitt Walker.
In the summer of 1914, Russell and his father, Armstead, had nearly caught a burglar who was terrorizing the neighborhood. On June 20 of that year, Russell mistook his father for the burglar and accidently shot and killed him. He was arrested for murder and, after five months awaiting trial, he was declared innocent.
The loss of her husband left Maggie with full responsibility for her large household. Fortunately, her intelligence and hard work kept the family very comfortable during this time. Her sons married and brought their wives to live in the large house with their mother in the Jackson Ward district, Richmond’s African-American business and social center.
Her son, Russell, never quite recovered from the shooting incident and, eight years later, battling depression and alcoholism, he died Nov. 23, 1923. Maggie Lena Walker developed diabetes and, with her health declining, her movement decreased as she was bound in a wheelchair which she designed herself.
Because of her immobility, and a lack of exercise, she developed diabetic gangrene and died Dec. 15, 1934, at 70. When she died, her will showed assets of over $900,000.
In her lifetime, she had seen slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the “reemergence” of the South, and had done a major part of the work in bringing about racial equality in Virginia.
She was wife, mother, teacher, newspaper publisher, department store owner, civil rights activist, and the first female bank president in the United States. Control of the bank she started remained in black hands until 2011 when the West Virginia-based Premier Financial bought Consolidated Bank and Trust and formed Premier Bank, a regional bank that now has over $1.5 billion in assets.
Not bad for the child of a slave. She proved that, if you have ambition and are willing to work hard, nothing is beyond your reach.
She never let racism, hatred, tragedy or unfairness stop her. When she saw a roadblock, she either jumped over it or tunneled through it. She was an amazing woman, a strong leader and a true inspiration. We need more innovative and courageous people like her, no matter what color.
