Black Ingenuity, Innovations and Community Opportunities

To highlight Black History Month, co-workers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis will have opportunities to connect, reflect and discuss.

Key themes include resilience and communing. Chris Montgomery and Jaronda Williams, co-chairs of the St. Louis Fed’s AACTIVE employee resource group, note how “resilience is based off of community. We want to pull everyone in and ensure they feel seen. It’s about allowing us to enter spaces where we historically haven't been: How we can move not just as a Black community, but as a community in the world, so we can all find success.”

Special events will enable St. Louis Fed employees to learn about Black ingenuity, hear perspectives from Black leaders, and enrich their understanding of historical innovations.

We invite you to do the same. Please join us in celebrating Black History Month by exploring the resources below.

Conversations

“We Can’t Do It Alone”

Lisa Cook is a puzzle-solver. A prior professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University. A climber of Mount Kilimanjaro. She is also the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

Prior to taking a seat on the Board in 2022, she was a featured speaker at the St. Louis Fed’s 2021 Women in Economics Symposium and spoke with our Women in Economics Podcast Series in 2019.

When hearing the phrase “women in economics,” she explained what it evoked for her:

“I probably think the phrase wouldn’t exist if there were parity. And it is lamentable that there is not parity, and that we spend a lot of time thinking about how to close the gender gap and the racial and ethnic gap in economics.

“So I don’t think of it as being completely negative or completely positive. I look at it as being a challenge. But one thing I certainly would like to make clear, we have to stop asking women and others who are the underrepresented people to do the work to raise representation. We can't do it alone. We absolutely can't do it alone. …”

Underrepresented people often aren’t in positions to be decisive in changing the landscape, such as on hiring committees and in department leadership, she said.

Uncovering Contributions

Nina Banks is an associate professor at Bucknell University. She also is immediate past president of the National Economic Association, an organization founded in 1969 as the Caucus of Black Economists to promote the careers of underrepresented people within the profession.

A decade ago, Banks began researching the work of Sadie T.M. Alexander, the first Black American to receive a doctorate in economics (among Alexander’s many professional accomplishments). Banks’ resulting work was the book “Democracy, Race and Justice: The Speeches and Writings of Sadie T.M. Alexander,” published by Yale University Press in 2021.

In examining Alexander’s writings from the 1920s to the 1970s, Banks found her to be someone who not only focused on economic conditions but also “challenged policies, public policies that created racial inequities for African Americans.”

“I also found that she was the first economist in the United States to advocate for a federal job guarantee. We thought that Hyman Minsky was the first in the 1960s,” Banks said in a 2021 podcast interview with the St. Louis Fed." So, those were some of the things that I found early on which helped to set the historical record straight.”

Research

Black Homeownership

A “legacy of redlining contributed to the low Black homeownership rate, as well as to the high rate of segregation in U.S. cities, and devaluation and disinvestment of Black neighborhoods even today,” writes author Faith Weekly of the St. Louis Fed in a 2021 blog post, “Narrowing the Racial Homeownership Gap.”

Weekly explains how homeownership is often viewed as the “gateway to the American dream and one of the primary mechanisms for wealth building in the U.S.” However, she notes that “Black Americans have been excluded from building wealth this way throughout history, from the Homestead Act of 1862 to redlining.”

In a 2022 blog post, she further explores the homeownership gap and offers insights into community land trusts (CLTs)—nonprofits that acquire and manage land for developing affordable homes and that can increase homeownership access for Black families.

In reviewing the potential benefits of community land trusts—which include investment, wealth creation and community building—and challenges—which are scale, capacity and funding—Weekly explains that “CLTs are not the only solution, but rather a supplement to a whole host of solutions to improve accessibility.”

A Region of Opportunity

As one of 12 Federal Reserve banks across the nation, the St. Louis Fed serves a wide cross-section of people and places. Our Eighth Federal Reserve District includes a swath of the Mississippi Delta region.

Our Community Partnerships and Investment team has engaged hundreds of stakeholders from across the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta to better understand the unique needs of this region. They are also building awareness on topics such as the credit environment for small-business development and financial resources for economic development.

In their 2021 piece, “Investing in a Region of Opportunity: The Delta Philanthropy Forum,” authors Sydney Diavua and Nishesh Chalise discuss shifting the narrative of a region where Black people compose a significant percentage of the population. They explain how perceptions can impact capital flows to a region which, in reality, is rich in assets and opportunity.

Through efforts such as the Delta Philanthropy Forum, the team aims to “walk alongside communities” amid a transformation process, say Diavua and Chalise.

The pieces captured here reflect individual perspectives as well as a national history with lasting economic and cultural impacts.

But they aren’t the end of story.

“There is so much more to Black history: Ingenuity. Leadership. Resilience. We are trying to get to a place of celebrating Black people,” Williams says. “This is our focus for Black History Month: We want better, and we want to do better so we no longer have to celebrate a first. We want to celebrate a win—a success.”