A Different Point of View

Archived Newsletters: Winter 2006

Maggie Mitchell Walker: Astute Businesswoman and Successful Banker

Throughout February, which is Black History Month, it is expected that media and educators will talk about the accomplishments of black men, overlooking the many inspiring stories of black women who overcame legal impediments based on both their race and gender.  One example of these early leaders is MAGGIE MITCHELL WALKER (1867-1934) from Richmond, Virginia, who was a leading businesswoman at the turn of the twentieth century and is often credited as being the first female president of a bank in the United States.  

Mitchell was born in Richmond, Virginia, two years after the Civil War ended.  Her parents were employed as cook and butler for Elizabeth Van Lew, who was the postmaster of Richmond. Van Lew provided a highly positive role model for young Maggie.

At age 17, Maggie Mitchell was elected as an officer in the Women’s Union, a local group of black women who provided insurance for themselves.  In these societies, which were local and nonprofit, poor people paid a few cents weekly into a mutual insurance program that then assisted them in time of need.  Many provided access to a doctor; most offered burial insurance and sometimes disability coverage. 

A Baltimore woman, Mary Prout, founded the insurance plan called Saint Luke that Maggie Mitchell joined in the early 1880s.  Mitchell developed highly astute business methods, especially the introduction of a weekly newsletter that educated African-Americans on the importance of savings. An 1886 marriage changed her name to Walker, but she continued with her career while bearing three sons. 

Her aptitude for business was clearly demonstrated after she became Saint Luke’s executive secretary in 1899.  The company was $400 in debt and down to two employees:  at her death 35 years later, it had paid out $3 million in benefits and its staff of 50 supervised solid assets.  She expanded from insurance into banking in 1903:  with assets of $8000, she began Saint Luke’s Penny Savings Bank, and by 1920, could cite 645 homes “entirely paid for through our bank’s help.” 

When Wall Street crashed in 1929, her bank was solid and absorbed most of the other area banks that served blacks.  With its name changed to Richmond Consolidated Bank and Trust, she paid dividends to stockholders during the Great Depression, when many other banks closed their doors.
Maggie Walker suffered from diabetes, which caused her death at 68.  She left her estate to her widowed daughter-in-law.  Her Richmond residence, just off of I-95, at 600 North 2nd Street, is a historic site operated by the National Park Service and is open to visitors.

 

Wicked Performance and NWHM-Hosted Reception a Success

NWHM Board members, Advisory Board members, Charter members, and friends came together January 5th to take part in a benefit performance of the sold out Broadway hit Wicked at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.After the play, NWHM hosted a reception for NWHM members, where they were able to meet the cast of Wicked, mingle, and enjoy refreshments. 

On the surface, it might seem an odd fit.  What could a work of fiction about the relationship between the two “witches” in the Wizard of Oz (Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West) have to do with women’s history? But on many levels, this play celebrates the strength and positive qualities of women and dramatizes what happens when history is badly distorted…in this case, most specifically, the “history” surrounding these two women…The story is about what happens before Dorothy drops into Oz and how Glinda came to be labeled as “The Good” and how Elphaba (the so-called Wicked Witch of the West) came to be labeled as “The Wicked.” 

“Where I am from we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true.  We call it – ‘history,’” says the Wizard of Oz as he tries to justify what he has done to smear Elphaba’s image.  While we may not have had the Wizard of Oz writing women’s history in the past, our history has been similarly distorted or just plain omitted.  This play inspires us all to work that much harder to fill in the blanks and correct the errors. 

Susan with the cast of Wicked
Actor Sebastian Arcelus, who played Fiyero, with NWHM Board
Member Ann Stone (left) and NWHM President Susan Jollie at the
reception at the Kennedy Center following the performance of Wicked.

 

Letter from our President

As we embark on a New Year, it is customary to adopt a list of resolutions detailing improvements for the coming year. I have a few resolutions for the National Women’s History Museum that I want to share with you because I believe we share the same goals.

First, we are working hard on an educational program for Women’s History Month in March. We will be producing written materials and public service audio clips that will quiz radio listeners on accomplishments of women who have made fundamental – but unacknowledged –contributions to the quality of life in America. We would like to broadly disseminate this information to classrooms and share it with women’s organizations.

Second, we need to make Congress aware that women all over the country strongly believe that women deserve more than token acknowledgement during one month of the year. Women deserve to be honored at a prestigious museum in the nation’s capital that serves to extol the pivotal role that women have played in our country’s development from the earliest days to the present. We will be mounting a national campaign to petition Congress to enact the National Women’s History Act of 2006, and you will be among the leaders in this movement.

To support these efforts, we have embarked in an overhaul of our website, www.nwhm.org, to spread the message of why and how women are deserving of recognition. We hope this will serve as an effective and cost efficient means of communicating with our membership. 

Celebrate These Women Born in Winter

A poet and literary critic, Harriet Monroe (12/23/1860) raised money to found Poetry magazine in 1912. As editor, Monroe followed an open door policy in her selections. She published poems by poets such as Carl Sandburg, Vachal Lindsay, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and William Carlos Williams. Moore is credited with initiating a renaissance in American poetry by supporting innovative writers focusing on urban, industrial issues and creating an outlet to reach the American public. Today, Poetry remains the leading publisher of modern American verse.

Dian Fossey (1/16/1932), devoted to protecting endangered gorillas, lived for over 30 years in the Virunga Mountains of Rwanda.  She studied the behaviors of mountain gorillas and developed a close, trusting relationship with them. In addition to her groundbreaking study on gorillas, Gorillas in the Mist (1980), she was an outspoken critic of illegal gorilla poaching.  Sadly, in 1985, Fossey was murdered, probably by one of the poachers she had denounced.

Rosa Parks (2/4/1913), a seamstress who lived in Montgomery, Alabama, was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. On December 1, 1955, Parks protested segregation laws by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Her action sparked the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott, ending when the Supreme Court desegregated public transportation in Alabama. The boycott marked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. Parks continued to strive for equality during the rest of her life. After her death on October 24, 2005, she was laid in the Capital Rotunda, the first woman to receive this high honor.

Jackie Joyner-Kersee (3/3/1962) has been called the greatest woman athlete of the 20th century. Born in a poor neighborhood in East St. Louis, Illinois, Joyner-Kersee excelled in basketball, volleyball, and track and received an athletic scholarship to the University of California at Los Angeles. She entered the 1984 Olympics and participated in three more Olympic games, winning a total of three gold medals and setting the women’s record for the heptathlon. In 1996, Joyner-Kersee began playing professional basketball for the Richmond Rage. She currently lives in East St. Louis with her husband and former track coach, Bob Kersee.

 

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