11 Black Finance Leaders in History

Maggie Lena Walker was the first Black woman to establish and serve as president of a bank in the United States. Walker found that white-owned banks didn't typically take deposits from Black organizations, so, in 1903, she started her own bank, St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, in Richmond, Va., with money gathered from members of the Independent Order of St. Luke, an African American benevolent society. It was renamed Consolidated Bank & Trust after merging with two smaller Black-owned banks in 1930. Walker also chaired the board of directors. The bank was still in operation and was the oldest continuously operated African American-owned bank in the U.S. until 2005, when a series of ownership changes led to Peoples Bancorp acquiring the bank in 2021.

In 1905, Alonzo Herndon founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, still one of the largest Black financial institutions in the United States. Formerly enslaved, he became a barber and eventually opened the Crystal Palace, a barbershop to elite white men. Historian Dr. Marcellus Barksdale told Georgia Public Broadcasting that, at one time, Herndon owned three barbershops and 100 properties in Atlanta. He became Atlanta's first African American millionaire.

O.W. Gurley moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1906, where he purchased 40 acres of land on what would become Greenwood, a community known as Black Wall Street. Gurley ran many businesses of his own and supported other entrepreneurs in their business endeavors. Greenwood became a thriving center that included law offices, medical practices, luxury shops, restaurants, movie theaters, barbershops and salons. It had its own school system, post office, bank and bus service. Michelle Place, executive director of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, told History.com, "It is said within Greenwood every dollar would change hands 19 times before it left the community." The town was devastated in 1921 during the 18-hour Tulsa Race Massacre, also known as the Tulsa Race Riot, when a white mob committed what is still one of the worst acts of racial violence in U.S. History.

In 1970, Earl G. Graves Sr. started Black Enterprise, a publication that is broadly recognized as the authority on African American business, finance and entrepreneurs. In an April 10, 2020, story about Graves's death, New York Times reporter Daniel E. Slotnik wrote: "The idea of targeting the Black business community was novel, but Mr. Graves pitched it with confidence befitting the multimillionaire publisher and businessman he would become."

In 1987, Clifton Wharton Jr. became one of the first Black CEOs of a Fortune 500 company, heading TIAA-CREF one of the world's largest pension funds with assets of $260 billion. At 16, Wharton went to Harvard where he earned a bachelor's degree, earned a master's degree in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins University School of International Studies and earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago. He was the first African American president of Michigan State University. He went on to manage State University of New York, the country's largest university system. He was appointed by then President Bill Clinton to be the first African American Deputy Secretary of State.

Reginald F. Lewis built the first Black-owned business to surpass $1 billion in revenue. Lewis was a Harvard-educated lawyer who is best known for the historic $985-million deal in 1987 to buy TLC Beatrice International Foods on the heels of a 1984 buyout of McCall Pattern Co. In his later years, Lewis became a philanthropist, donating to homeless shelters and neighborhood churches. In 1992, he donated $3 million to Harvard Law School, making him the largest individual donor to the school at that time.

In 1980, Robert L. Johnson founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), which, in 1991, became the first Black-controlled company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In 2001, Johnson sold BET to Viacom for $3 billion, making Johnson the first African American billionaire.