Black Enterprise Deferred: The Triumph and Defeat of Chicago’s First Black Banking Mogul

Don Hayner | Binga: The Rise And Fall Of Chicago’s First Black Banker | Northwestern University Press | 2019 | 298 pages

As many across the United States have and continue to turn out in protests against police brutality and systemic violence against Black people, one can’t help but notice that they’ve rejuvenated a movement that demands accountability for how Black-owned businesses have been neglected and greater equity for these businesses. The fact that the coronavirus pandemic is still prevalent and affecting Black people is an added impetus for these actions, especially when it comes to those Black business owners who have yet to see any relief from the federal government. These two situations have the common effect of fueling the movement demanding a more substantial number of Black businesses. Those demands are made in the spirit of the Pan-Africanist orator and activist Marcus Garvey, who memorably stated that “a race that is solely dependent upon another for its economic existence sooner or later dies.”

Popular culture is also now reckoning with the historical neglect of Black businesses and their histories. Take The Banker, for example, a motion picture starring Anthony Mackie and Samuel L. Jackson as Bernard Garrett and Sam Morris, two highly innovative Black real-estate partners in 1950s Los Angeles. After the two expand their empire by using a white man as the face of their business, they buy the largest building downtown—a building housing a number of banks. The sheer audacity of the duo’s actions shows how, even when the costs were dire, Black businessmen and women had to make bold moves to be successful in a country that still viewed them as lazy and unintelligent. While the history of Black enterprise in the United States is partially a history of dreams becoming reality, it is also a history of how many dreams were deferred because of systemic racism and, at times, self-harm. It is in this light that Don Hayner’s new book, Binga: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black Banker, depicts the life of Jesse Binga and the struggles that Black entrepreneurs endured to become an economic bedrock of and source inspiration for the Midwest and the rest of the nation. And in some ways, it also speaks to how aspiration and determination can often walk a fine line between capital success and chaos.

Hayner, retired editor-in-chief of the Chicago Sun-Times, composed this full-length biography of Jesse Binga with the flair of a cinematographer. He is dedicated to ensuring that the reader understands Jesse Binga’s story as a compelling narrative of blackness in the face of adversity. Binga’s story is also fundamentally tied to Chicago’s rise as a major metropolis, which was buoyed by its position as a central hub for the American railroad system. Indeed, before Binga was a peddler, he was a Pullman porter.

When setting the scene, Hayner describes how the 1893 World’s Fair was a formative experience in the city’s growth, while also noting that Black Americans were fighting for dignity as they were shown in moments in a denigrating light. Beginning with an account of the reverence Chicago natives had for Binga, the book proceeds to lay out his life with the greatest detail. Despite a few early moments where the narrative jumps around or appears redundant, especially regarding his early years in Detroit, the book is well-written and engrossing.

Hayner does exceptionally well in noting how Binga navigated and rose in a society hostile to his success. An example is how Binga, a Roman Catholic, earned the trust of Black churches and convinced them to make deposits in his bank at the beginning of his career. Indeed, Hayner shows Binga to be a man whose vision is a mesh of the Black community’s differing philosophies. The author puts this forth with an example showing how Binga capitalized on the issue of colorism in the Black community through “straw purchases” conducted by fair and light-skinned Black women, including his most trusted employee, Inez Cantey. These purchases helped the Black Belt community grow with State Street at its epicenter. Binga’s dream of Black enterprise tapped into the spirit of his friend Robert S. Abbott, the founder and editor of the first Black newspapers of note in America, The Chicago Defender. He also gained inspiration from noted writer and activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Booker T. Washington. However, Binga demurred when it came to Jamaican-born political activist and writer Marcus Garvey’s vision of self-sufficient blackness (Garvey’s mention in the book is anecdotal but does serve as a flashpoint of foreshadowing).

Hayner also illustrates how Jesse Binga’s vision, limited by the oppressive circumstances that Black people in the United States were subjected to, led to him make questionable decisions out of necessity. The stressed decision-making process is exemplified by Binga’s abandonment of his first wife and son soon after he took to the road as a Pullman porter. Furthermore, after the stock market crash of 1929, Binga‘s attempts to save his State Bank and other properties led to a trial for embezzlement and, eventually, his imprisonment. In that respect, the events leading up to the prosecution and Binga’s fall serve as a bridge between what occurred with Marcus Garvey (who would be convicted of mail fraud in 1923) and the convictions of Bernard Garrett and Sam Morris in 1965. These situations show that enterprising Blacks often walked a fine line to get ahead, so much so that they could be compelled to take on additional risks because their access to traditional avenues of growth was so frequently denied out of racism. Indeed, Hayner takes care to present this very point by retelling Binga’s trial against the bittersweet backdrop of his life afterward. Binga’s story suggests that, while Black enterprise might have been deferred for him, others could claim it. One example is John H. Johnson, whose Johnson Publishing Company, created in the 1940s, produces the iconic Ebony and Jet magazines to this day.

With Binga, Hayner has done readers and aficionados of Black and Chicago history an excellent service by painting a complete picture of a man who strove to create his own empire. In that light, the book captures how Black enterprise in America was deferred but can be reclaimed—a lesson sorely needed in this time of pandemic and protest.