FREEDOM BANK OF FINANCE (1969-2000)

CONTRIBUTED BY: NATALIE MALLARD

In 1968, a group of businessmen in Portland, Oregon saw the recently founded Bank of Finance in Los Angeles, California as a model for their creating the first black-owned commercial bank in the Pacific Northwest.  The businessmen, with help from Los Angeles, founded the Freedom Bank of Finance, which opened in 1969.

The African American businessmen in Portland included Realtor Venerable F. Booker, restaurateur Roy Granville, grocery-store owner Silas Williams, and dentist Dr. Booker T. Lewis.  All of them felt that a black-owned commercial bank would serve the financial needs of the local black community including providing capital for emerging businesses in the Albina-North Portland district that was home to most of African Americans in the city.  Roy Granville, one of the bank’s founders persuaded Onie B. Granville, his cousin and the founder of the Bank of Finance in Los Angeles, to temporarily move to Portland to help establish the new bank.

The Portland-based Bank of Finance opened on August 4, 1969 after J.F.M. Slate, the Oregon Superintendent of Banks authorized its organization.  The Portland founders and other early investors raised $600,000.00 in stock to finance the new institution.  Onie B. Granville who at the time was still on the board of directors for the Los Angeles based Bank of Finance, agreed to serve temporarily as the first president of the new Portland bank.  Granville along with Booker, Lewis, Williams, and cousin Roy Granville, became the first board members.

The Freedom Bank of Finance was first located at 728 NE Killingsworth Street in Portland.  Shortly after its opening Onie B. Granville returned to Los Angeles and Venerable F. Booker became president of the bank.  The name was changed later that year to the Freedom Bank of Finance, and in 1971 it was relocated to 2737 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. In 1975 the bank was renamed again to American State Bank.

Although it had individual depositors, The Freedom Bank of Portland relied heavily on governmental agencies for much of its working capital. By 1971 the state of Oregon and Multnomah County (where Portland was located) each had $100,000 in interest bearing deposits. For much of the 1970s the bank had an average of $50,000 in Model Cities deposits from the U.S. Government.

By 1989, however, the bank began to experience difficulties. At the end of that year American reported $640,857 in problem loans, or 13.5 percent of its total loans. The average for most banks is 2% and anything over 3%, according to bank analysts, is considered dangerous.

Despite the problem loans, the bank had net profits of $110,448, up 18 percent from $93,666 in 1988. At the end of 1989, American had $1.8 million in equity capital, or 11.8 percent of its assets, a ratio that far exceeded the federal government’s capital requirements.

American State Bank’s success was generally attributed to its longtime president and principal stockholder, Venerable F. Booker who upon nearing his 80th birthday, sold it in 2000 to Albina Community Bank and retired.  Through his prudent fiscal leadership, American State Bank, which Booker called, “the bank that integration built,” survived much longer that similar black or non-black banks throughout the nation.

CAMILLA WILLIAMS (1919-2012)

 CONTRIBUTED BY: HELEN LEICHNER

Operatic soprano Camilla Williams was born October 18, 1919, in Danville, Virginia to Fannie Carey Williams and Cornelius Booker Williams. The youngest of four siblings, Williams began singing at a young age and was performing at her local church by age eight. At age 12, she began taking lessons from a Welsh singing teacher, Raymond Aubrey, but because of Jim Crow laws the lessons had to be conducted in private in Aubrey’s home.

After high school, Williams attended Virginia State College for Negroes, now Virginia State University, in Petersburg, Virginia. She graduated in 1941 with a bachelor’s degree in music education. After graduation, Williams taught 3rd grade and music at a black public school in Danville. In 1943, fellow Virginia State College alumni paid for the gifted singer to move to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and study under influential voice coach Marion Szekely-Freschl. Williams began touring in 1944 and during one concert in Stamford, Connecticut she met Geraldine Farrar, a respected soprano opera singer and the original star of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s Madame Butterfly. Farrar was so impressed with Williams’ voice that she soon took her under her wing and became her mentor. Farrar even helped Williams to sign a recording contract with RCA Victor and to break into the highest levels of American opera.

In 1946, Williams had her first major role when she played Cio-Cio-San in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly at City Opera in New York. While at City Opera, Williams also played the roles of Nedda in Leoncavallo’s Pagliaci, Mimi in Puccini’s La bohème, and the title character in Verdi’s Aida.  Throughout her long career she performed with the Boston Lyric Opera in Massachusetts, the New York Philharmonic, and became the first African American to sing a leading role at the Vienna State Opera in Austria. Although she had a successful career, due to the color of her skin, Williams was often cast to play “exotic” characters and was sometimes forbidden to play leading roles that had been originally written for a “European.”  In 1951, the singer won the role of Bess in the first complete recording of George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess.

In 1950, Camilla Williams married New York City civil rights attorney Charles T. Beavers, who worked closely with key activist figures like Malcolm X.  She was also involved with the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, she sang the Star Spangled Banner at the White House and then again at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington. Her rendition of the national anthem was the prelude to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech.

In 1977, Williams became the first African American professor appointed to the Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. She continued to teach at Indiana until her retirement in 1997. Camilla Williams passed away on January 29, 2012 at her home in Bloomington, Indiana.

HUEY P. NEWTON, “THE WOMEN’S LIBERATION AND GAY LIBERATION MOVEMENTS” (1970)

CONTRIBUTED BY: QUINTARD TAYLOR

On August 15, 1970, Huey P. Newton, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, gave a speech in New York City where he outlined the Party’s position on two emerging movements at the time, the women’s liberation movement and the gay liberation movement.  Newton’s remarks were strikingly unusual since most conservative, moderate, and radical black organizations remained silent on the issues addressed by these movements.  The speech appears below.

During the past few years strong movements have developed among women and among homosexuals seeking their liberation. There has been some uncertainty about how to relate to these movements.

Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion. I say “whatever your insecurities are” because as we very well know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we are afraid that we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the woman or shut her up because we are afraid that she might castrate us or take the nuts that we might not have to start with.

We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people. We must not use the racist attitude that the White racists use against our people because they are Black and poor. Many times the poorest White person is the most racist because he is afraid that he might lose something, or discover something that he does not have. So you’re some kind of a threat to him. This kind of psychology is in operation when we view oppressed people and we are angry with them because of their particular kind of behavior, or their particular kind of deviation from the established norm.

Remember, we have not established a revolutionary value system; we are only in the process of establishing it. I do not remember our ever constituting any value that said that a revolutionary must say offensive things towards homosexuals, or that a revolutionary should make sure that women do not speak out about their own particular kind of oppression. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite: we say that we recognize the women’s right to be free. We have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society.

And what made them homosexual? Perhaps it’s a phenomenon that I don’t understand entirely. Some people say that it is the decadence of capitalism. I don’t know if that is the case; I rather doubt it. But whatever the case is, we know that homosexuality is a fact that exists, and we must understand it in its purest form: that is, a person should have the freedom to use his body in whatever way he wants.

That is not endorsing things in homosexuality that we wouldn’t view as revolutionary. But there is nothing to say that a homosexual cannot also be a revolutionary. And maybe I’m now injecting some of my prejudice by saying that “even a homosexual can be a revolutionary.” Quite the contrary, maybe a homosexual could be the most revolutionary.

When we have revolutionary conferences, rallies, and demonstrations, there should be full participation of the gay liberation movement and the women’s liberation movement. Some groups might be more revolutionary than others. We should not use the actions of a few to say that they are all reactionary or counterrevolutionary, because they are not.

We should deal with the factions just as we deal with any other group or party that claims to be revolutionary. We should try to judge, somehow, whether they are operating in a sincere revolutionary fashion and from a really oppressed situation. (And we will grant that if they are women they are probably oppressed.) If they do things that are unrevolutionary or counterrevolutionary, then criticize that action. If we feel that the group in spirit means to be revolutionary in practice, but they make mistakes in interpretation of the revolutionary philosophy, or they do not understand the dialectics of the social forces in operation, we should criticize that and not criticize them because they are women trying to be free. And the same is true for homosexuals. We should never say a whole movement is dishonest when in fact they are trying to be honest. They are just making honest mistakes. Friends are allowed to make mistakes. The enemy is not allowed to make mistakes because his whole existence is a mistake, and we suffer from it. But the women’s liberation front and gay liberation front are our friends, they are our potential allies, and we need as many allies as possible.

We should be willing to discuss the insecurities that many people have about homosexuality. When I say “insecurities,” I mean the fear that they are some kind of threat to our manhood. I can understand this fear. Because of the long conditioning process that builds insecurity in the American male, homosexuality might produce certain hang-ups in us. I have hang-ups myself about male homosexuality. But on the other hand, I have no hang-up about female homosexuality. And that is a phenomenon in itself. I think it is probably because male homosexuality is a threat to me and female homosexuality is not.

We should be careful about using those terms that might turn our friends off. The terms “faggot” and “punk” should be deleted from our vocabulary, and especially we should not attach names normally designed for homosexuals to men who are enemies of the people, such as Nixon or Mitchell. Homosexuals are not enemies of the people.

We should try to form a working coalition with the gay liberation and women’s liberation groups. We must always handle social forces in the most appropriate manner.