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So I am a day late with the greeting and as a historian, I am vaguely ashamed of myself. But I have been working on a presentation that I am giving tomorrow about black women activists. I think, for Black History Month, I will highlight some of them here. First up, Maggie Lena Walker, who drew on her belief in the power of community and mutual aid to convince her neighbors to invest in what would become the St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank. The bank offered loans to African Americans who were often denied credit at white-owned institutions and helped them build homes, in hopes of encouraging the building of equity in the community.
Read more about her here.
1 comment:
This is great to read. I had no idea. Maggie Lena Walker, what a role model. Thank you. I had a student worker in my office who, as a freshman, had a homework assignment which was to identify and write a paragraph about the person in a photograph. By some fluke, I recognized W.E.B. DuBois so I thought that was too easy, although the student found it really difficult. I wish the assignment had been a picture of Maggie Lena Walker. Even I have heard of men like DuBois but I know I'm not the only one who has heard nothing about such women as Walker. Stunning. Success, dignity, family, brillant woman and you know the odds were stacked incredibly high agains her at every turn. No I did not know that marriage meant she could not teach. So much stacked against her. And overcome. Lovely lesson today. Thank you.
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