Giving a Lift to Black-Owned Banks

Inglewood real estate agent Lola Bateman happily traded in her 15-year-old Bank of America account for a new one at the black-owned Founders National Bank of Los Angeles on Saturday.

“I really feel good about switching,” she said with a big smile. “I should’ve done it a long time ago.”

South-Central Los Angeles carpenter Melissa Mitchell came with her son, David, 9, to open his first bank account with $100 at Founders National. “It’s for David’s college,” she said modestly. “It’s not much yet, but it’s a start.”

From near and far, African Americans by the hundreds came to the only black-owned bank in Los Angeles to launch the “Change Bank Day” campaign, spearheaded by Muhammad A. Nassardeen, the head of Recycling Black Dollars, an Inglewood-based organization of 2,000 black business owners. In addition to Founders, Los Angeles’ three other black-owned financial institutions are participating.

The notion of self-sufficiency among African Americans dates back many generations, but it took the momentum generated by October’s “Million Man March” in Washington to trigger the new Los Angeles effort, organizers said.

Some just soaked up the upbeat atmosphere and enjoyed the refreshments and music at Founders’ Baldwin Hills headquarters Saturday. But many waited in line to open new accounts.

By late in the day, Founders National Bank, a 5-year-old bank with five branches and assets of $100 million, was richer by $600,000 and 200 customers.

“It’s just phenomenal,” bank President Carlton Jenkins said. “This is the best birthday present the bank could have received.”

Jenkins said that what made the day the most exciting for him were the new faces he saw--especially mothers who came with their children.

“What they’re saying is, ‘We’ve finally arrived with you, Carlton,’ ” he said.

In return for their business, the 40-year-old Los Angeles native vowed to invest depositors’ money in the black community and serve them with care and efficiency.

“Change Bank Day” is the latest effort here to persuade African Americans to alter their financial habits by thinking black.

The campaign’s goal is to get African Americans, who organizers estimate have $9 billion in Los Angeles-area financial institutions, to transfer 25% of their savings to black-owned establishments by 2000.

The operation is supported by many black institutions, including the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Nation of Islam and Congress of Racial Equality.

“The idea isn’t new--I’ve heard it back in the ‘30s,” said Celes King, state chairman of CORE. But the “Million Man March,” which emphasized the rejuvenation of black enterprises, gave the concept the momentum it needed, King said.

“Building on that momentum, it was time to let people know that we are not the poor people that many people have depicted us to be,” said Recycling Black Dollars’ Nassardeen, who founded his organization in 1988.

“If we were able to get just 25% of our money into black banks, we can see a hotel on Crenshaw, a hotel at the Conventional Center, new manufacturing plants in South-Central, which in turn would provide more jobs for young blacks,” Nassardeen said.

He said the campaign was based on self-help, not racial separatism. “We’re into survival,” he said. “Nobody ever called it racism when other people were doing it.”

Banker Jenkins added: “Look how well Asians have done by keeping their money within their community.” By contrast, he said, local black-owned financial institutions have only 3% of black deposits.

The other black-owned financial institutions in Los Angeles are Broadway Federal Savings, Family Savings Bank and South-Central People’s Federal Credit Union. The Rev. Cecil Murray, pastor of First A.M.E. Church, who blessed the event with a prayer, said blacks must change from being good consumers to good producers.

In the Korean community, every dollar spent generates more commerce within the community, Murray said, because Koreans tend to do business with one another, but that is not the case in the black community.

Furthermore, because black-owned banks are so small, blacks have difficulty getting loans to start businesses, he said.