Presented By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies
EIHS Lecture: "All the Devils this Side of Hades": Minnie Geddings Cox and Black Finance in the 1920s
Shennette Garrett-Scott (Texas A&M University)
Format: This lecture is presented in hybrid format: in-person in 1014 Tisch Hall and virtual via Zoom webinar (register: https://myumi.ch/n8V68).
Description: By 1920, Minnie Geddings Cox led a financial empire that included a wildly successful, Black-owned insurance company and bank. Few women of any race could boast of such an accomplishment. In 1923, she attempted a merger that would have made her Mississippi Life Insurance Company the largest Black-owned insurance company in the country. She could not have foreseen the daunting challenges poised to thwart her vision: from white regulators and businesses anxious to cash in on Black success to self-proclaimed Negro Captains of Industry determined that they—and not a woman—would remain the avatars of Negro progress in a Jim Crow financial world.
Biography: Shennette Garrett-Scott is committed to telling little-known stories of early Black business. She is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and the author of the multiple award-winning book Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance before the New Deal, published by Columbia University Press in 2019. She is working on an upcoming book tentatively titled Black Enterprise: Black Capitalism in the Making of Modern America, which will be published by W.W. Norton. She has published widely in scholarly journals, popular magazines, and online blogs. Follow her on Twitter at EbonRebel.
This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.
Description: By 1920, Minnie Geddings Cox led a financial empire that included a wildly successful, Black-owned insurance company and bank. Few women of any race could boast of such an accomplishment. In 1923, she attempted a merger that would have made her Mississippi Life Insurance Company the largest Black-owned insurance company in the country. She could not have foreseen the daunting challenges poised to thwart her vision: from white regulators and businesses anxious to cash in on Black success to self-proclaimed Negro Captains of Industry determined that they—and not a woman—would remain the avatars of Negro progress in a Jim Crow financial world.
Biography: Shennette Garrett-Scott is committed to telling little-known stories of early Black business. She is an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and the author of the multiple award-winning book Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance before the New Deal, published by Columbia University Press in 2019. She is working on an upcoming book tentatively titled Black Enterprise: Black Capitalism in the Making of Modern America, which will be published by W.W. Norton. She has published widely in scholarly journals, popular magazines, and online blogs. Follow her on Twitter at EbonRebel.
This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.
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