Embark on a historical odyssey with me, Langston Clark, as we converse with the brilliant Dr. Brandon K. Winford about the legacy of one Black banker and his profound intersection with the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Winford, author and historian, guides us through the remarkable journey of John Hervey Wheeler, whose multifaceted life defies the conventional barriers that often divide business leaders and activists. We delve into the rich tapestry of HBCUs and their role in sculpting African American thought as Dr. Winford shares his own path from law to mastering the annals of history, inspired by the very heart of Durham's storied past.
As the dialogue unfolds, we uncover the lesser-known narratives of Black business magnates who have been pivotal in shaping the quest for social justice. These leaders, often eclipsed by other prominent figures, emerge as crucial agents of change, offering more than just economic growth—their voices carry the weight of a community's aspirations for equality. The episode challenges the simplicity of economic gestures from institutions, spotlighting the necessity for a holistic approach in the ongoing struggle for progress within black communities.
The past's whispers echo into the possibilities of the future, where we muse about Black Wall Streets and their untapped potential had they not faced the ravages of urban renewal. We question what might have been for places like Durham had they been allowed to flourish alongside economic powerhouses like Charlotte. The conversation culminates in considerations of the re-emergence of black banking and the integration of black professionals into the corporate world, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of Dr. Winford's forthcoming work. Join us on this enlightening expedition through our shared history and its implications for the future of black economic empowerment.
Embark on a historical odyssey with me, Langston Clark, as we converse with the brilliant Dr. Brandon K. Winford about the legacy of one Black banker and his profound intersection with the Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Winford, author and historian, guides us through the remarkable journey of John Hervey Wheeler, whose multifaceted life defies the conventional barriers that often divide business leaders and activists. We delve into the rich tapestry of HBCUs and their role in sculpting African American thought as Dr. Winford shares his own path from law to mastering the annals of history, inspired by the very heart of Durham's storied past.
As the dialogue unfolds, we uncover the lesser-known narratives of Black business magnates who have been pivotal in shaping the quest for social justice. These leaders, often eclipsed by other prominent figures, emerge as crucial agents of change, offering more than just economic growth—their voices carry the weight of a community's aspirations for equality. The episode challenges the simplicity of economic gestures from institutions, spotlighting the necessity for a holistic approach in the ongoing struggle for progress within black communities.
The past's whispers echo into the possibilities of the future, where we muse about Black Wall Streets and their untapped potential had they not faced the ravages of urban renewal. We question what might have been for places like Durham had they been allowed to flourish alongside economic powerhouses like Charlotte. The conversation culminates in considerations of the re-emergence of black banking and the integration of black professionals into the corporate world, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of Dr. Winford's forthcoming work. Join us on this enlightening expedition through our shared history and its implications for the future of black economic empowerment.
What's up everybody. Once again, this is Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of entrepreneurial appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting black businesses. And today we have a very special guest, dr Brandon K Winford, a historian who was the author of John Hervey Wheeler, black banking and the economic struggle for civil rights, and, as you notice, I'm wearing my a n t hat, aggy pride. He's wearing his north carolina central gear. That's okay. It's okay that he went to central. I went to a n t. For those of you who went to pwis, this is like in the state of north carolina. This is like our michigan ohio state in the black colleges. Okay, it's still a pleasure to have him here joining us today, though I'm a double eagle, by the way.
Speaker 2:I have a lot of cousins who went to a n t, and so we go back and forth a lot. As a matter of fact, this past homecoming, they're putting your homecoming on the same day.
Speaker 1:No, that was terrible. I don't know what that's about. Yeah, it was terrible.
Speaker 2:I took a little. She had a little a n t stuff up in her in her house decorated. I stuck a little picture up, I put my little a n t hat up and I was like we don't care about her decorating the house, but we're still gonna come and take over.
Speaker 1:That's all in love, all in love, all in love. Brandon, before we get started into your autobiography, I found out about you through, uh, gelani favors because gelani was on a podcast, maybe like two years ago, talking about his book about black colleges, shelters in a time of storm, and so what's really interesting is that in your book there's a lot of mentioning of hbc us and you have your own history being in north carolina central and family members there and at other universities. Tell us a little bit about yourself and being a historian, but also, how did you come to this type of history, this type of black history?
Speaker 2:so I'm from north carolina. I'm from a place called moorsville, north carolina, our day of county, probably about 30 minutes north of charlotte. Growing up I was always interested in history. Black history month I was always excited about. I I try to put together my own little black history month clothes and my cousins and they'd be interested for about two minutes and they want to go play or something like that. But so so history was always. I was always interested in history, always interested in biographies of black leaders, for example mary mclaw bethune, paul lorz dumbbar I remember reading books for younger readers about them and so it was always interested in african-american history and then biography. So that's the interest in generally.
Speaker 2:But when I went to central I was partly went to central because they had a law school.
Speaker 2:I was interested in going to law school, had always drawn up, grew up, said I was going to be a lawyer and so I went to central in part because they had a law school and I had a whole plan about going to to law school. As a matter of fact, I came in as a political science major and then, you know it was enrolled in a few history courses and just appreciated the ways in which my history professors in particular laid out history. For me it wasn't so much that they were just sort of giving me history and saying this is how it was, but they were sort of laying out aspects of history and providing different angles and evidence to understand that history and believing it up to students to come up with their own conclusions in terms of interpretation. And so that was just interesting to me, inviting, and so I switched majors from political science to history and move forward from there.
Speaker 2:I did a summer program for undergraduates at u and c chapel hill and the more undergraduate research apprentice program, and it's geared towards undergraduate students who are have may have some interest in going to graduate school, but they're not quite sure and don't know what it's all about. And so I actually went to that program with a book that said how to get into the top 50 law schools, even though I was had some interest in graduate school, but by the end of it I was like I could see myself doing this, and so that's really how I just decided on graduate school.
Speaker 1:But at dot com central.
Speaker 2:It is a really great history program. There is a tradition in fact. We have the reputation for sending a lot of master's degree students on to phd programs and so we have the staff, that kind of lineage in terms of you get going to central's master's degree program or history program undergrad. It's a whole other extended kinship work that's already there to give you a sense of what, what is possible if you're interested in pursuing history. So we have a lot of students go get the phds and they have a lot of students who finish and just are working in areas of public history, working as teachers in public schools. So there's a rich history there that encourages and nurses the pursuit of history beyond just one's undergraduate degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a little bit about just came to really sort of history. Now, the kind of history that I came to do was really partly motivated by the fact that I was in Durham undergrad and didn't know much about its history even still, aside from when you go, there's all these stories about Durham and how, how driving it had been in terms of african-americans in the whole nine. When you get there, a lot of it is not visible to the eye, so you're constantly wondering where was this black wall street where? Where was it at?
Speaker 2:I don't see it even the landscape, you don't see it. If you read the book you'll notice, because of urban renewal, but I didn't see it. So this just really didn't know much about Durham's history. And so, as a master's degree student, my assistantship was focused on this organization called the Durham committee on the affairs of black people, and I had a chance to basically gather archival material and had a master's thesis to write, and so I just decided to work on this master's thesis on this organization, the civil rights organization, and that's why I went across john hervey wheeler, because he had been chairman of this organization. And so that's how I came to john wheeler and really, civil rights history. As a side note, I didn't have in mind to do civil rights history because you have it's already been done. It's a lot of civil rights history. What more do I have to say about civil rights history? So I wasn't even interested in in working on anything related to civil rights history, but I sort of fell into it all right.
Speaker 1:what about the banking part of it? You fell into the civil rights part, but were you more interested in the banking in the business part and it just happened to be so connected to civil rights? Or did you fall into the civil rights part and then you found out the banking in the business was related to the the civil rights came from?
Speaker 2:Really great point because obviously I decided to. When I got into the graduate program, my PhD program was going to, I was backing forward between doing a broader dissertation on the Durham committee or John Hervey Wheeler. And as I was thinking about John Hervey Wheeler, I was thinking about conceptualizing it as a civil rights history project and areas of business. Believe it or not, I really wasn't interested, or I wouldn't say I wasn't interested. I think I was a little bit intimidated about working on business history, didn't know much about it. Sometimes you think you have to learn how to become a business person from that standpoint and so I was a little intimidated by it. And so the business part of it. Even though he's this banker, he's this big, this business person in the United States, the huge deal business wise, I really was more conceptualized in this project as a civil rights history project. I really just focused on John Hervey Wheeler and his civil rights activism.
Speaker 2:And, as a matter of fact, if it hadn't been, for Professor UNC Gina Ray-Ming Deal, who, in a meeting we started talking about my project and she was like you know, here's this book on black business history by Julia EK Walker, who's one of the scholars who does pioneered in a lot of ways the field of black business history, and we got to talking about how I needed to focus on business, his business at a career, just as much as civil rights, and so that's how I was pivoted toward the realization that you need to have some focus on him as a businessman.
Speaker 2:But even still, I'm still intimidated by expanded on the business aspect of John Hervey Wheeler, even as I was writing this biography, and so the banking piece comes on a bit later. As a matter of fact, it really wasn't until I was working on the book I actually realized, or recognized, that I wanted to do more with black banking but just didn't have the time to do more in the book in terms of what I wanted to do Because I spent so much time not really focused so much on his business side of things. It's more or less focused on civil rights piece and so I just didn't have time to pursue it in the book, which is you know, but as I got more interested then I was like I'm all in as it relates to black business history and I wanted to expand and learn more about black business history more generally.
Speaker 1:So the book is interesting and those of you who are listening I told Brandon this before we started recording that I was looking at the book and I noticed that there's there's a watermark over the image of John Hervey Wheeler. There's this map that overlays the picture of John Hervey Wheeler, so could you talk about what that map represents, and then we'll talk a little bit more specifically about John Hervey Wheeler.
Speaker 2:That map is a layout of the one particular project, the proposed urban renewal plan for Durham. The federal government had this lot of funds for urban renewal programs. We're in urban areas about revitalization, basically cleaning up these particular areas, and to come in and then sort of renew, revitalize these particular areas. So in Durham there was a particular proposed urban renewal project, basically in the heart of the black community and that's basically a proposed map. That's an overlay of the HATI section of Durham where the majority of African-Americans live. You probably can't notice, but it was divided into proposed area one, two, three I think it was maybe about six areas that they would, or six phases that they would begin this urban renewal project. And so that map was part of how they proposed and talked about what they were planning to do as it relates to urban revitalization.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting because what this image was one of the images that I proposed to the press. And there was another image and the urban renewal maps are actually included in the last chapter and I had no conceptualization of using the map as part of the cover and so when I actually got the, they sent the book cover with the map on there. I was like blown away because I didn't even envision it like that. But yeah, I was really happy and excited when I saw this cover. It was banger cover, that's for me.
Speaker 1:So I get it. It's like it's a piece of art, more than just that picture of him up there. I almost feel like that could be in a museum, that could be in a Harvey Gantt Museum somewhere in Charlotte. I really appreciated how that was done. So let's talk about John Harvey Wheeler and I think about him as a man with a complex identity, and I say that because that's somewhat related to my research. So in my research we talk about black athletes and so one of the outcomes of black athletes who we've studied black male athletes who we study, who were really successful academically, they're sexual in the field, socially, all of that stuff was that they had complex identities. So these guys thought about themselves as more than just athletes and that's what allowed them to be successful academically on the field and socially where they were in college. And so I think about John Harvey Wheeler and so much of how, of how I think I personally view black businesspeople.
Speaker 1:It seems like now everybody's in their lane for how they do the work of uplifting the community. The business person is not the activist. The activist is anti-capitalist and they don't mess with the businesspeople. The businessperson is a sellout. The activist is out of touch with reality and in the real situation of what's going on the preachers, the people who are in the church. The church is doing church stuff, but the church ain't doing business stuff and the church ain't doing activism like it used to. But it seems like John Harvey Wheeler was all of those things wrapped up in one. So talk a little bit about who he was and what he did and why he was a significant person for you to focus on for this book.
Speaker 2:Excellent question. So, yeah, all these people that we study in terms of them being historical figures are really complex people. They have these complex identities and I think it's important to point out that even the work that I did on John Wheeler, I always look at it as a talk to tell people it was a. It's a crumb of what could have been said about John Wheeler, like it doesn't even come close to capturing really who this person was. And so John Harvey Wheeler was.
Speaker 2:He was born into a family of black business. Like his father was an executive with the world renowned North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. His parents have been educators that been among some of the earlier graduates of Wilbur Forrest University the family, so education was an important part of his background, an important part of his coming of age. Education was extremely important in the Wheeler household. His sister one of the sisters becomes an art teacher in New Jersey. His other sister was, and all of them were raised with a sense of culture in terms of. He was also a trained by a Lennis. When he was at Morehouse College he was on the orchestra and Glee Club. He had another sister who she played and taught piano, and then his other sister. She was, again, our teacher, and so John Harvey Wheeler, as part of his identity, education was an important part of this. Him being a violinist and musician was an important part of who he was in terms of his identity. His father was credited with bringing tennis to black Atlanta, and so John Harvey Wheeler was an avid tennis player and so he had all these kind of interest. As a matter of fact and I write about this he almost became a music teacher at Tuskegee Institute, who founded by Booker T Washington. So all of that played a factor in who he eventually becomes and so in many ways and I think this is important about understanding his significance and just the work that he was doing and he was part of the black middle class elite had a life of privilege coming of age when compared to the majority of African-Americans. The fact that he's able to go to college wasn't typical for the majority of African-Americans, so that's a part of him, and so he could have lived a life of privilege and works in the field of business and been successful and went about his way just as a matter of course, but I think understanding the role of citizenship and institution building that was so central to how his parents operated.
Speaker 2:I think, by extension, this kind of responsibility to community was an ideal that stayed with him. It's an ideal that is, with a lot of and just to talk about black businesspeople, there's a possibility to the black community that many of them have and part of it is, yes, the black community is part of their clientele and they profit off of black people in terms of the services they provide. But they also have a role to play in the community and responsibility. That they took very seriously and so as part of his identity, that for John Irving Wheeler, that responsibility to community was a central component of who he was as a person. And then when he comes to Durham, that sense of responsibility to community and leadership was already there and I talk about it in terms of it was a training ground for him. And so that responsibility to community that he already has coming into Durham and understanding the role of black leadership in the role of businesspeople in that community and shaping the future for black Durham All of this plays a significant role in who he actually becomes.
Speaker 2:He's trained in not just business, but he also gets his training in. I call it black business activism, but it was. It was also just training in the responsibility of businesspeople in the community. One of his mentors got by the name Richard Lewis McDougal. He said that the banker was a key person in the community and have his responsibility, not just to ensure that their financial institutions survive, continue, but they have a responsibility to the community. And he was someone who encouraged black businesspeople to engage in politics, to join in voting and voter registration and things of that nature. So all of that sort of really came into play when it came to John Irving Wheeler and so there's so many facets to who he was and how he approached his, his civil rights leadership.
Speaker 1:Talk a little bit about Wheeler as the banker. I want to go from banker civil rights activists, so talk about the bank he worked for, the bank he was a part of, and then talk about how that leads into him being the civil rights activist.
Speaker 2:So, interestingly, john Irving Wheeler was born in 1908. The mechanics of Farmers Bank, the banking institution that he spends his entire career with, founded in 1908. So in some ways they're kind of like these kind of twins in a lot of ways. So the gas farmers bank it was founded in part as an extension of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, which was became the largest black owned insurance company in the United States, founded in Durham by John Merrick, dr Aaron Mcduffie Moore, charles Clinton Spaulding becomes a part of the leadership and so again, john Irving Wheeler's father was an executive with the North Carolina Mutual. He oversaw the Atlanta office and later the Georgia district, and so John Irving Wheeler has a front row seat to black business. Quite often these executives of the North Carolina Mutual will visit the Wheeler home and John Wheeler talked about them sitting at the table for breakfast. And here are all these the presidents, the business manager, all at one table and he's off as a little kid just kind of listening to this conversation. And so he's very much a part of this fabric, is very much a part of who he is. He goes to Morehouse College as a high school student, continues on into the college program, gets his degree in business in 1929, right at the beginning of what would eventually be the start market crash in 1929. And so he begins his business career at an interesting time, to say the least. But part of the reasons why he goes to the McAdams Farmers Bank is his father and mother. They don't really see a future in music. He has some strong interest in pursuing music as a career, but they put it in front of them what are the better options? A business career had better options from their perspective. His father again had his network that he was a part of, and so it has made sense to go into business from that particular standpoint. By 1929, when John Wheeler comes and works for the McAdams Farmers Bank as a bank teller, making about $60 a month, that bank had grown from up to almost a million dollars in terms of resources, had been very instrumental in providing for African Americans in terms of loans for houses, for businesses that people were interested in starting, and also this serves as this depository for the reserves of the insurance company, and so it was one of those financial institutions that becomes a part of the North Carolina mutual, but also Black Wall Street. When I talk about Black Wall Street I'm talking about financial institutions, we talk about Wall Street. We're talking about financial institutions. There's a way in which we grow that term Black Wall Street around to mean anything Black business, but right Of what it meant to be a Black Wall Street centered on those places that actually had many financial institutions, and in Durham there were at least a dozen or more financial institutions that were interlocking and were responsible for a lot of the economic progress that was made in Durham, right? So John Willard, when he comes a bank teller, he comes into the again, this already moving network of Black businesses, and he's comes in at a right time. He has some other opportunities.
Speaker 2:But one of the things about the McAdams Farmers Bank, by the time John Hervey Willie comes in, is they began to hire employees by then who had college degrees. There was a time when many of them they were not trained as business people. Right, you had preachers, you had people who ran a mutual aid, fraternal organizations, lawyers, medical professors, people from the professions were not trained in business, and John Hervey Willie was someone who was actually trained in business. So he's part of a generation who was trained in business, and the interesting thing about the McAdams Farmers Bank is they had a really good sort of connection with Morehouse College and you may not notice, but many of the people who come to work for the McAdams Farmers Bank in the 30s and 40s are actually Morehouse College graduates, specifically Morehouse College graduates. And I could talk about some other people. But there is also this sort of network with historical Black colleges and in this case McAdams Farmers Bank, morehouse College.
Speaker 2:So John Hervey Wheeler comes in as a student from Morehouse College. He had his history with his father being an executive with North Carolina Mutual. They had lived in Durham a few years, so he was very familiar with what's happening in Durham and he's mentored by many of the executives. But in particular he's mentored by a guy by the name of Richard Lewis McDougal, who I mentioned. And again is Richard Lewis McDougal who really gives him a sense of the importance of his role as a banker and the possibilities there and the role in the community. But it was McDougal who encouraged the kind of activism that expands who John Hervey Wheeler becomes by the 1930s.
Speaker 2:And John Wheeler, again, he's in training, he has an opportunity to front row seat to all these Black business leaders, people like Richard Lewis McDougal, people like Charles Clinton Spauldin, who's the president of the McAdams Farmers Bank and he sees how they handle and deals with a different community issues that come up, and so he learns a lot during this particular period and that helps shape how he comes at civil rights in the 1940s and 1950s.
Speaker 2:And so his leadership revolves around the coddum between what it means to be a black business person in the community. And then how do you, how do you merge that with your role economically? And many of these business people were economically independent, which meant that for them to focus on civil rights and those issues they didn't have to confront the kind of economic reprisals that the average person, someone who was working in the tobacco factory, might have yeah, franch it with. And so they have a lot of leeway and they use the economic positioning as a one historian called the kind of launching pad for civil rights, economics as a launching pad for civil rights.
Speaker 1:This is interesting. I was having a debate with old head he's not too much older but he is an old head and we were talking about when there's some sort of justice issue that comes up. You know, brothers get together almost like barbershop talk. We was talking you know the George Floyd stuff. We got some local banks here that were trying to do justice work and it's interesting we were like man, we always keep seeing that the preachers meeting with the FBI or the county, the people that work in politics at the county or the police chief and things like that when it comes to criminal justice issues and all of that.
Speaker 2:And with them trying to figure out ways to solve the or to prevent issues of police brutality and things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how it, how it manifests on the historic East side, which is where all the black people are, you know all that stuff, and we was having conversations like they didn't have no business people there. They didn't have any of the black business leaders in that conversation, and so I think it's important for the audience to recognize that historically, it wasn't just the pastor who was there, it was the business people who were there, the people who had their fingers on the pulse of the black economy, who were sitting at these tables as well. But I think we get caught up on this in this narrow narrative that says only the preacher. The preacher is the only leader in the community, and I'm not hating on a church, but after reading this book, it affirmed for me in a lot of ways that the business people in some ways have more to offer in terms of the actual mechanics in the process of the progress than the pastors do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it. That's an interesting point. Now the one thing I will say is, in business people on back to people, like I'm working on something now while I'm using a speech by Cece Spaulding. It's titled 50 years of progress in business, basically 50 years of black business progress from 1900 to 1950.
Speaker 2:Now I will say that and this was losing really important like the black church as an institution was extremely vital to how black business came to be Again. Any of the preachers, by extension, they were interested in seeing the African Americans be involved in business and one would argue that had it not been for the black church, black business as a field, as an institution, would not have been possible in many ways, and so I think it's important to know that the pastor, the minister, historically was very much a part of the fabric of when we talked about black business, so that's something to kind of know, as was the black press as an institution. Those are two institutions that were as fundamentally central to sustaining black business as some other entities. Now, in that same vein, I think that and it's not to say that when black preachers are meeting with the power structure, that they are not talking about business, because they may be talking about business, but it is important to have business people in the room because much of that conversation does center around development, economic development in communities and so forth, so it's extremely important.
Speaker 2:Now I'll point to another aspect. When we're talking about social justice initiatives and social justice conversations that are centered on how to move black communities forward, I think sometimes we do just think back to the cause to buy black, to bank black. Whenever there is a social justice issue that takes national attention, just like the George Floyd murder, there is a call for black economic initiatives. I think sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that economic resources will solve social justice issues. Just think about it 2020, every institution when George Floyd happened from educational institutions, corporate businesses and the like pledged a certain amount of their financial resources to black business.
Speaker 2:Netflix pledged about $200 or so million dollars to deposit into black banks.
Speaker 2:Every institution turned their attention to how can we support economically black communities, and so I think we think that black business or economic resources are going to solve the problems of social justice alone.
Speaker 2:I think that's a strain of how to deal with the issue, but there's a way in which, when it comes to healthcare, when it comes to so many other social justice issues, I don't think black capitalism for lack of a better word is going to solve those issues. And I think sometimes we think economic resources as a way to really sort of deal with these wholesale issues of social justice, citizenship, voting and things like that, and they won't. I think it's an important piece of it, but I think sometimes we take this little piece, this strain, and that becomes how to solve all these particular issues. So I think, just going back to your original questions, the, it is important for those business people to be at the table, but I also think sometimes that table focuses too much on what black business might be able to do in terms of some of this. I'm not sure that that makes sense and I'm I'm happy to answer the follow up questions.
Speaker 1:There are limitations to what even black business can do. We have to be careful to think of it as a panacea for all issues related to social justice or issues that affect our community. I think we're so, so hungry to start to see our own economic solidarity, and because we don't feel like we don't have much of it, we maybe start to overstate the impact that it could have. Even though it will, it's not going to solve for all issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely there's going to be some impact, but I think it's not just that we focus our attention there, but also we actually kind of take accountability off the table for systems in terms of the operating function when they pledge a certain amount of money, when they pass legislation to help support small businesses or minority businesses. It's a way actually to. Once you throw money at something, then it's already put that money there. So whatever they do or don't do is their fault.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We sort of alleviate some of that accountability. And so I think when we are promoting or talking about black economic interests, we do have to talk in terms of and be very specific. But we also have to remind this is just one piece of what's needed in our communities, and we got to sort of keep pressure, and I think we do. But I think that sometimes those entities that are that feel a responsibility to do something economically and financially, that's all they feel a responsibility to do at that point, right, I think sometimes we let them off the hook when we focus so much on what they need to do in terms of throwing money at particular problems and challenges. You know so for me it's economic resources plus so many other ways to attack these particular issues. So we kind of kind of look at it from a holistic perspective when we're dealing with social justice issues.
Speaker 1:There's two things I want to say. The first thing I want to say is the way that I digested this book was that John Hervey Wheeler it wasn't just an autobiography. His life was the context for the history you were telling and it's really localized in some ways to North Carolina and Durham. And so can you talk about why it was important to anchor this history locally and through the story of John Hervey Wheeler? Because it to me is almost like a technique I'm not a historian by training, but the way I read it was an interesting technique to show how the business person and all these other folks, these other stakeholders in black community, were a part of civil rights movement. And you're telling history, you're telling like about the first sit-in and then you're talking about the sit-in movement and how that got started and all these other things that are happening at the same time.
Speaker 2:So, in essence, it's thinking about how the local impacts the national and how is this cross fertilization, for the lack of better word.
Speaker 2:So that was something that was really, really important.
Speaker 2:Obviously, again, I didn't start out thinking that I was going to do civil rights history, Because again I had the mindset that we know that so much has been done on civil rights history, so much has been done on Dr Martin Luther King Jr and on down the line, and what we realize is that the civil rights movement was it by no means just about Dr Martin Luther King Jr and his organizations and what they were able to do. As a matter of fact, much of what Dr King was focusing on as related civil rights stemmed from many local organizations and issues that come to the attention of these national leaders, and so it was important for me to think about John Harvey Wheeler in relation to Dr King and kind of think about ways to understand the civil rights movement by de-centering Dr Martin Luther King Jr. I often ask the question to my students and just people in general could we talk about the civil rights movement and not mention Dr Martin Luther King Jr at all? Could we? And that's like sacrilegious right, you know you can't, but yes, we can.
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Speaker 2:Not that we won't recognize the significance of Dr King in it, but as a way to understand the complex nature of what the civil rights movement was. We have to think about other ways to understand these movements, and so John Hervey Wheeler was someone that provided a kind of counter to the typical narrative that we're used to hearing and talking about when it comes to the civil rights movement. Our thing about my work is we're bringing together a conversation that brings together both civil rights and economic rights, or black business history, and brings them together in a way that they're interconnected, Because the civil rights movement even if we look at Dr Martin Jr economic rights business was very much a part of the broader goals and objectives of the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so it's also a way to use someone like John Hervey Wheeler to bring attention, when we're talking about civil rights movement black, to the ways in which economic rights were a central part of this broader fight for citizenship. And so part of the way in which you can understand it through John Hervey Wheeler is that he understood that economic power for African Americans was important. You needed economic power, but African Americans couldn't have economic power without having all their citizenship rights. Yeah, educational equality, employment opportunities, housing is extremely important, because he pointed out that where one lived matter to their access to equality. Voting. Public policies had to reflect, had to provide for citizenship rights.
Speaker 2:Once African Americans had those citizenship rights, economic power will become more of a possibility. Yeah, it wasn't just about African Americans getting economic power, because, if you look at, the majority of most of African Americans, even by the mid 20th century, are still living in the South. Yeah, think about them not having economic power. For him, that has some bearing on the ways in which the South as a region could move forward economically. So it wasn't just about African Americans, it was about the entirety of the region. So we use and look at John Hervey Wheeler to understand the relationship between citizenship and economic rights in the ways in which they're interconnected and you can't have one without the other. Yeah, and he would say citizenship rights were central for economic power, as opposed to, if you go back to Booker T Washington and others, many of them Booker T Washington said that economic independence had they happened first, yeah, yeah. Then social, political and economic rights citizenship will come.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But by the 1930s you look up and that hadn't been the case. So John Hervey Wheeler represents a generation that is that turns that on his head. We can't even have economic independence without citizenship rights Right, and so he was as a lens to understand the relationship between black business and civil rights. We use John Hervey Wheeler to understand why, as a business person, someone who you think he doesn't have interest in citizenship as a business person, why educational equality was important because it determined your educational training, determined whether or not you would be able to get job opportunities. Your again, housing has some bearing on what other things you had access to, things like voting and being able to vote for political candidates and who had particular interest in mind was important for economic reasons. This is why we see him so engaged as an activist in the civil rights movement, because it was important for economic rights. So we understand the ways in which business people came at civil rights. We also understand John Hervey Wheeler as a way to challenge the idea that black business people because during segregation they were benefiting from having exclusive clientele and African American customers, yeah Also understand through Wheeler how that actually wasn't true. A good majority of our black business people were for integration because it has some bearing economically on their businesses and institutions. And now I'll just sort of break it down like this so the majority of black businesses did not have an exclusive lock on black customers. They were still, throughout that history, they were still competing with their white counterparts for black customers. So one they were not just benefiting from segregation as such, because they never had a lock on black clientele.
Speaker 2:So we see John Hervey Wheeler, in understanding his fight for integration, is very much him understanding that there's more opportunity. There are more opportunities in the broader world and if there's a broader marketplace for African Americans then the limited marketplace would just be able to do business with African Americans. So he understood that if the McKang's a farmer's bank, if there was integration, that his banking institution could compete with white banks of comparable size. So he saw integration as something that was going to like benefit the McKang because he was going to be able to sort of tap into this broader marketplace.
Speaker 2:And a lot of other business people saw this in the same light. And then we can have a conversation about what happened in reality. But for them they were interested in integration because of the possibilities it would have meant for their, their businesses, right, and that's not to say that some people saw integration as something that was going to mean the downfall for black business. But there were also so many possibilities and so many of these, these leaders they don't see. They didn't see an abandonment or a marginalization of black institutions more generally. With integration, black institutions could become stronger, educational institutions could become stronger, businesses could become stronger, and so forth, and so on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's this misconception that the type of economic solidarity we had pre-integration was one whereby we always supported black businesses. Yes, if that were the case, there would have been no boycotts. There would have been no need for boycott. You know what I'm saying. I think sometimes we have this fantasy world. Back in the day, we supported black businesses, we worked together. No, it wasn't this weird utopia that we created in the midst of all of this racism. It's interesting that you brought that up.
Speaker 2:I definitely do think there was some things that, because of Jim Crow, segregation and the ways in which it compelled and forced black communities to come together we were talking about in terms of the landscape and in terms of not having access. There's a way in which community was formed and there was a maintenance of solidarity from a number of perspectives, but a lot of that was a byproduct of having to confront racism, having to confront white supremacy, having to confront everything that came along with that. There was a way in which it forced African-Americans to come together on one accord. Historians, if you look at my work, if you look at the work of people like Leslie Brown, who writes about Black Durham, she makes the case that we also have to understand the complex nature and the nuances within the black community and, in many ways, having different ideas and different ways to strategize, to think about issues, that tension, that intra community tension, was actually more, was actually beneficial. So we actually have to understand black community and how it operated as being more nuanced and complex than just sort of being on one accord. There were a lot of disagreements and fights. There's a lot of people who were handicapped. There's a lot of people with capitalists, a lot of people who embraced it, a lot of people who didn't want to bank with black institutions and rejected banking altogether.
Speaker 2:There's a way in which we look at business.
Speaker 2:There's a way in which the informal economy was as impactful and had as much of a contributing factor to communities sustaining themselves, even as much as the kind of legal of black business.
Speaker 2:And so I think, understanding the ways in which black communities function and operate it, I also say that the black community as we kind of understand it as historically or black communities, I should say in terms of how we understand it historically I think the reality of place and the landscape was very much in part of that solidarity with urban renewal and things like that. It disrupted not just where people live and where people did business, but the community upbuilding that had been intact for decades and decades. And I think to some degree I would say that, even if they don't realize that, not people are actually the ways in which the community came together around that. And so I think they just don't sort of understand. They're not saying necessarily go back to segregation, but I think they're saying how do you get that sense of not just a sense, but that real community and the functions and ways with black communities operated. How do you get that back? How?
Speaker 1:do you capture that? I want to mention one thing I think is important to highlight is that, in the midst of not having full citizenship, I still recognize that Wheeler had some privilege over most of the black folks. He operated as if he had full citizenship in terms of how he engaged with politics, with black constituency, with politicians and policymakers. He was more engaged in the process than even a lot of us are today having way more citizen rights than black folks did right then, and I think that that's hugely commendable for him. I want to mention something else and I'm gonna need you to help me remember this. There's a part of the book and I don't know if it's I think it's Wheeler's daughter or his mom, I think it's his daughter and it was a way that they were raising their daughter and she was like she got engaged and he was telling the guy she's not just going to be a homemaker, she wasn't raised like. She wasn't raised that way.
Speaker 2:So you're talking about oh go ahead, you can finish.
Speaker 2:No, no, so you're talking about Selena Warren Wheeler who is his wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but when they basically got together and were about to get married, her father guy by the name of Stanford, who was one of the founders of the McCain's Farmers Bank actually been president at one point of the McCain's Farmers Bank and by the time of his death in 1940, he's the chairman of the board of the McCain's Farmers Bank he basically tells John Wheeler, like you know, you know she's not going to cook, you know, in other words, she's not going to be a stay at home mother or wife because she has so many other interests outside of the home.
Speaker 2:And so and that kind of stems from her own mother, who was a businesswoman, was a beauty culturalist or a hairstylist, hairdresser in Durham, seeing her mom function and operate outside of the home. She just had different ideas of what she wanted to be as a black woman in societies. So, yeah, that was, that was an interesting dynamic that is important for us to understand. And even in that it doesn't mean that John Herbie Wheeler didn't have very traditional ideas about womanhood or the role of the wife, but he was going to be getting someone who wasn't going to play to those traditional roles of womanhood, and even for black women more generally, aren't working in the home in the way that their counterparts are African American, women always had to work by their family, especially in cases where they're leading the household.
Speaker 2:But John Wheeler's wife, Selena in her own right was a instrumental figure, came to citizenship in Durham. When it came to, she was a librarian. She eventually came to the head of the black library so she was very instrumental from an educational standpoint in Durham. One critique of my book is there could have been more about Selena Wheeler in her role in Durham and seeing her as a kind of activist or at least a civic leader in Durham as much as John Herbie Wheeler was.
Speaker 1:So a few things to point out. I think a lot of people don't realize that Durham is the other black Wall Street, and you mentioned how urban renewal was a catalyst for that black Wall Street not existing in the way that it should, and it wasn't like some terrorism or anything like that that did away with that Wall Street. It was a more subtle and subversive way of dismantling black economic progress. And what's interesting is about the black Wall Street and Tulsa they rebuilt after the terrorism and the same things happened after. I think it was a great depression and whatnot. So I want to make that clear that there was more than one black Wall Street, and I want to talk about thinking about Durham as a black Wall Street and then the context of what happened with this fight for integration, this fight for full citizenship. We might be a better way to think of it, right. And Durham then with this black Wall Street, and then I think about Charlotte. Now, like Charlotte is like the banking capital of the United States. It's not. It's not Wall Street itself, but a lot of the major banks have their headquarters in Charlotte.
Speaker 1:And my fantasy world what could Durham have been if it hadn't been dismantled in that way. What do you? What do you think it would have been? I'm asking you to be more like a. I love Marvel Comics. What if? So? I'm asking you to take your, your historian hat off and be sort of a fantasy, a fantasy author right now. Like what? What is the what if? What if black Wall Street and Durham never went away? Would it? Would it be what Charlotte is now, instead of Charlotte being what it is? And would it be more integrated, where you would have a big black bank and Bank of America, bank of African America, in there too? You know what I'm saying. What do you imagine that would have been?
Speaker 2:So let me address the idea of Black Wall Street again. You noted that Durham was the other black Wall Street and we do think of. When we talk about Black Wall Street, we talk about Tulsa, oklahoma, and Durham, north Carolina. However, a lot of us historians, especially people like Jeanette Garrett Scott we talk about this a lot and she writes about this too that even just making the distinction of these just two black Wall Street is a misnomer as well, because you know, we think of it in terms of the idea of Black Wall Street plural with an S. Again, when I talk about Black Wall Street, I'm talking specifically about the financial institutions that were in existence and one can make a case that because there actually wasn't a black bank in Tulsa, in the Greenwood district didn't have actually a black bank. Oh wow, black banks in Oklahoma or in Muskogee I may be jacking up Muskogee and Bolly, oklahoma the black banks.
Speaker 2:It's not to say there were no financial institutions. You know, think about sort of the Greenwood bank, now the fintech company with Kilomite. So this idea of Greenwood and being associated with a bank is kind of interesting because, again, the black banks in Oklahoma were in other places. Yeah, nevertheless, when I talk about Black Wall Street, I'm thinking about the financial board, commercial districts with those financial institutions, whether they're talking about banks, insurance companies, building and loan associations, savings and loan associations, and during that was a fire insurance company, surety insurance, like insurance that, or fidelity insurance was insurance for professions like doctors and lawyers and things like fraternal organizations. So I'm talking about those financial institutions. And so, if we look at Black Wall Street from that perspective, I'm talking specifically about areas where there were these financial institutions in existence.
Speaker 2:Now, not just that, but we think of Black Wall Street, those finance institutions, other Black businesses. Black Wall Street had a significant residential section of African Americans. There were other institutions operating in tandem. In many instances there was at least one or more historically Black colleges and universities. And so we think about Black Wall Street where these financial institutions existed, but also there were some things that contributed to the ways in which the broader community could support these particular financial institutions. So in that sense, you know you may have tol or Greenwood and Tulsa, you may have Durham, but then you had Richmond, virginia, right before Durham and Tulsa was a Black Wall Street Again Boli and Muskogee, oklahoma, like if you go back and look at the if you look at sort of Black banking and history, things come up. It's the banks in Muskogee and Boli, Oklahoma, that are in the conversation.
Speaker 2:I think Tulsa sometimes is because of the massacre that happens. There is some attention there. So, richmond, atlanta, georgia, nashville, tennessee, memphis, tennessee, birmingham, alabama, right, these are areas that we can point to. When I talk about Black Wall Street's plural, I think about these places as being representative of that reality as well. So I just kind of want to put that out there. When we think about Black Wall Street, which should also sort of expand our understanding and also think realistically about the ways in which the idea of Black Wall Street has changed, right, conceptually, when somebody mentions Black Wall Street, most of the times they're talking about areas where there are just any Black businesses like you know, just to kind of impart in the conversation the reality of Black business.
Speaker 2:They'll point to this idea of Black Wall Street. So that's one sort of thing to think about. Now Charlotte is in the top three of the financial capitals in the United States. The other two are New York and San Francisco, and generally San Francisco and Charlotte switch places between being number two and number three. Yeah, charlotte and San Francisco, or New York, san Francisco and Charlotte, right?
Speaker 2:So think about what that means in terms of the impact of Charlotte as this financial center in the United States. It's not even Atlanta in the South, it's Charlotte, north Carolina, right, but if we look at North Carolina and banking, charlotte does become this capital in the latter part of the 20th century, but when it comes to black banking, it was Durham was a financial capital in the United States before Charlotte. Durham might not make an impact in terms of the resource when compared to the broader is, but it was Durham before Charlotte. And, as a matter of fact, in the early 1960s the McKinsey Farmers Bank decides to establish a branch in Charlotte 1962, 1963. Stablishes a branch in Charlotte in many ways because Charlotte was becoming this financial capital within the country. And so I think the leaders of McKinsey Farmers Bank and Durham Commission they see what Charlotte was becoming as a center from that particular standpoint. So in that sense they looked at Charlotte as a way to expand what their businesses could do.
Speaker 2:Also, before we get to like the turn of the 21st century, you had in Winston-Salem there was Wacovia Bank. That was one of the largest and it was headquartered in Winston-Salem, one of the largest white banks in the United States. And before it goes is Charlotte is headquartered in Winston-Salem. So Winston-Salem, one could argue, was a financial capital of sorts. Bdnt, it was headquartered in Charlotte, I think I want to say Wilson, north Carolina. I might be wrong on that. So there's a way in which other places in North Carolina served as these financial centers, charlotte becomes debt. By the late 20th century, I think, a lot of institutions saw Charlotte becoming what it is today, and of course Charlotte was still the largest city in the country, and so the fact that it didn't have a black bank for so long was something that black leaders in Durham was certainly paying attention to, and so that's kind of one way to sort of think about that particular issue.
Speaker 1:I guess what I'm asking you what do you imagine Durham would be now, had not Black Wall Street been dismantled?
Speaker 2:And when I think of this idea of dismantle dismantle I think of as an intentional taking apart I'm not so sure that it was we can look at urban renewal as being a part of the dismantling. That's what I mean. Without that, what would be? So I think urban renewal was a death nail for a lot of black communities and one could argue was a death nail for Black Wall Street Urban renewal. In many ways there could have been an avoidance of urban renewal. I think there's a way in which these communities remain intact. There's a way in which they could pivot toward the kind of modernity things that were beginning to contribute to progress in different ways. We were talking about technology and things of that nature. I do think urban renewal has a lot to do with it. I think we have to take urban renewal out, but I also think beyond just urban renewal.
Speaker 2:If you look at what John Wheeler began to point to once the gains of civil rights became viable, we began to see the gains of civil rights. He began to point more to institutional racism. He made a case that that was even going to be more challenging than the legal phase of the civil rights movement, the direct action where you're getting access to these spaces. But I also think the conversation about integration is important because John Wheeler, he was an integrationist, he fought for integration, but he also understood it and talked about how integration had to happen. It wasn't just about you put some black people in these white spaces and mess integration. He actually thought about the details of integration and I give certain examples in the book. But he constantly talked about if you integrate in a previously all black bank, wasn't just that person was going to be working black person was going to be working for that bank, but were they going to have access to all the kinds of opportunities that any employee would have? In other words, he made the case with a black person working in a white bank be able to come president of that white bank.
Speaker 2:So I think part of answering your question is thinking about there had to be more thought about what integration was going to be and there had to be some kind of conversations and decisions about the implementation of integration. So I think the reality of integration impacted black communities and, by extension, black businesses tremendously. In other words, there's a way in which these black businesses continue. But I think with the coming of integration, the reality of integration. It proved more devastating because African Americans have more options in all different areas. We look at the example of education, where we see, for example, previously all black high schools. They get downgraded to middle school and elementary school.
Speaker 2:Many of the principals and leadership of these black schools didn't become principals or leaders at these white schools, and so there was literally an abandonment of these black institutions in the name of integration. Think about the decades and decades of tradition and history of just these black high schools, like with athletics and awards and academics, and those traditions were literally left, pushed aside. Integration wasn't okay. Let's talk about the ways in which we could take these traditions and everything that has happened, net, structure the employees and bring it together. It was black people coming to those white institutions and literally doing a way of getting rid of everything that had been had made those black institutions impossible.
Speaker 1:So and I know I'm not really answering the what if?
Speaker 2:but I think part of that what if is things like urban renewal and also the promises of urban renewal too. We forget about the promises. Yeah, we look at the reality of urban renewal. But part of what why John Willis supported urban renewal was because it wasn't as envisioned. Going to it didn't mean to demise of those black institutions and those black businesses. So he saw the continuation of black businesses and black institutions.
Speaker 1:The rising tide lifts all boats, type thing.
Speaker 2:Right. So that's kind of how I think of that particular question. Again, part of it is is I do think the black institution, the black business could have continued in a very strong way had, again, integration been worked out probably with more, more patience or more intentionality and detail.
Speaker 1:I imagine it's like a 1990s Eddie Murphy movie. All the movies that Eddie Murphy came out with in late 80s and 90s. It was like all the black people were in prominent positions. I think about Boomerang. Now, boomerang was about a marketing company, but Boomerang also could have been a bank, do you know what I mean? And then there's, you see, eddie Murphy clearly works for what I think is a black owned marketing company. And then there's a French company that bought, that bought what's the name? Who the earthy kid playing at Hello Marcus? I can't remember her name Lady, uh, lady, eloise, right, this French company bought Lady Eloise's company. And then there's this scene I'll never forget. There's like the Marcus Garvey black what is it? What is it? The diaspora black unity flag, or whatever it is next to the French flag, like this up there. And so it's like this interesting. It would have been like Eddie Murphy's parallel universe. That's the way I look, that's the way I, that's the way I think it would have been Right.
Speaker 2:But I think part of the way to think about that question too is like they did survive. There were black banks and, as a matter of fact, there was a and I'm talking about this in my second book a rebirth or resurgence of black banking in the late 60s through the 80s Wow, so. So there is a way in which we can focus attention on how these businesses or institutions did continue. So in some ways, there's no what ifs, it's just the reality of many of them kind of continuing. I think the the 1990s is probably when we see like a lot of the black owned insurance companies and banks, savings and loan associations fall about a wayside. But I think on some level we do have a reality of black business continuing.
Speaker 2:So there is some ways the, the what ifs, is answered in other ways by the continuation of black business, but also think the reality of integration within corporations, which we began to really see after the civil rights act of 1964, where black professionals do have opportunities in white corporations or what previous have been, you know, historically, white corporations. So I think the realities of the people to the experience needed and, you know, I think people got to the opportunities and so I think that's again. Integration is one area for us to go back and look at in terms of, not the fact of integration. The idea of integration was about black people accessing the resources that had always not been available to them, so integration in its essence was a positive step, but the ways in which integration was implemented is something that we got to come back to and have a conversation about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if there was one more chapter in the book or section in a book that you were going to write or include, what would that be and what would it be about?
Speaker 2:Really good question. So now I'm currently writing my second book on, called Our Good Fortune A History of Black Banking in the American South. So that other chapter would have been more or less a broader portrait of the history of black banking. So, whereas in the book I actually talk about John Hertha Wheeler and the Kansas Farmer's Bank one bank, one institution and I don't talk about McKinsey Farmer's Bank or black banking even from the standpoint that standpoint, as much as I wanted to. So it'll be a broader chapter on black banking and maybe, to a lesser extent, a chapter just on the McKinsey Farmer's Bank or something along those lines. So that next chapter is actually the next book.
Speaker 1:All right, dr Brandon K Winfrey, thank you for joining us here today. Hopefully I'll see you one day at an Aggie Eagle Classic, maybe the next time they play for the Duke's Mayo Classic. You know something like that, yeah thank you so much. Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.