Viewing page 405 of 484

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[image - Ebony Magazine, 1947]]
On busy street corner of 11th and U Street, NW, Industrial Bank is in heart of Negro area in Washington. Many Southern migrants who make deposits are illiterate and have to be helped with deposit slips and check endorsements. President Jesse Mitchell usually sits at big desk near bank entrance and greets depositors with Hello as they enter. 

BIGGEST BANK
D.C. Industrial Bank with $6,000,000 assets is top Negro financial institution

BIGGEST and fastest-growing Negro bank in the nation is the Industrial Bank of Washington with some 14,000 depositors and close to $6,000,000 in assets.

Although Negro-owned and operated, at least one-fifth of its depositors are white, mostly small businessmen in the neighborhood.

Opened a dozen years ago in the wake of the natural bank holiday, the D.C. financial institution is a monument to far-seeing, white-haired Jesse Mitchell, its founder and president. When the District's only Negro bank closed its doors in the depths of the depression, Mitchell without any previous business experience except 15 years as a realtor took over the site of the old Industrial Savings Banks and repainted the sign outside to read "Industrial Bank of Washington,"

Mitchell had only $200,000 in assets and had a tough time holding on the first year when deposits were virtually at a standstill. However, once customers began trickling in, they kept coming. The bank has been growing ever since its employees rising from 5 to 27. Greatest growth came during the war and after, with a million and a half dollars in assets added in the last year to make it the biggest of the 13 Negro banks in the country.

As a banker Mitchell has faced all the problems of a white institution, plus others that are racial in essence. For instance, a Negro bank can't hire whites in Washington. Mitchell is not prejudiced against whites, but he can't find any willing to work for him. Ordinarily an all-Negro staff would not be a drawback except that the single bank training institute in Washington admits whites only. As a result Mitchell has to find his employees mainly among business students from colleges and they usually know very little about practical banking. He holds regular classes for beginners, with experienced help acting as instructors.

Mitchell has definite ideas about what role of his bank. "There are a large number of colored people with very small accounts," he explains. "They need an institution to cash their checks and do other serices [[services]] for them. Other banks don't want this small business. A colored bank in a colored community serves that purpose. That is the way it justifies its existence."

There are other ways that the Industrial Bank helps out in the community. Recently a distraught woman came to ask for Mitchell's aid. She could not pay the mortgage on her home, and they were going to foreclose the next afternoon. Acting swiftly, Mitchell assume her obligations and gave her a chance to pay off gradually. He has often gone out of his way to prevent foreclosures and he finds that people will pay him back in 99 percent of the cases.

However, he does not let sentiment sway him. He looks at all transactions with the hard eye of a practical banker and knows when to turn down an applicant. But the community trusts his judgment. "I can say no to an application for a loan, and they like it," he admits.

Mitchell is now 65 and he looks back on his career as an example of how Negroes can succeed in business despite handicaps. As far back as he can remember he wanted to go into business. His family was not poor--his father was a doctor and his uncle a lawyer--but little Jesse's ideas of a business were too big for the small town of Mavasota, where he was born. After trying his hand as a clerk for the Houston firm of R.G. Dun, which later merged into Dun and Bradstreet, he finally mde [[made]] a break and left Texas forever at the age of 25 to go to Washington. There he successively was a Navy clerk, realtor and finally banker, attaining at the age of 52 his lifelong ambition to be a big businessman. 

403