Douglass State Bank (Kansas City, Kansas)
- Veronica Carr
- Aug 7
- 2 min read
Place this in your memory bank!
The month of August was established in 2004 as National Black Business Month by historian John William Templeton and engineer Frederick E Jordan, with the purpose of supporting highlighting and advancing policies to help black businesses expand and flourish.
Although we at Nanny Jack & Co, LLC collect, research, and document historic Black businesses on a daily basis, this seems like the perfect month to highlight the numerous Black businesses who helped build America's thriving Black working, middle, and upper classes.
According to Experian.com, as of 2024, there were more than 250 black owned banks and credit unions across 28 states. But there was a time in history when the idea of a black owned bank was rare, especially in the Midwest.
Douglass State Bank was established in 1947 at 1314 N. 5th Street in Kansas City, Kansas by Henry W. Sewing, a local Black educator and insurance salesman. The bank was named for formerly enslaved abolitionist, author, and ambassador #FrederickDouglass.
Sewing was born February 5, 1891 in Bremond, Texas; his father was a day laborer and his mother was a washerwoman. "Sewing helped out the family by seasonally picking cotton and attended public school before he graduated from Tillotson College in 1915. Sewing had taught at Tillotson and Fisk while pursuing his education, so post-college, he found work as an educator in an elementary school before teaching Latin and math at an area high school." (Information From Community Voices KS, Feb 2024) Sewing served in #WorldWarI and then began his insurance career in 1922. Discouraged by the lack of financial institutions available to African-Americans in the Midwest, sewing initially founded his own loan company, Sentinel Loan and Investment Company. However, this enterprise didn't last long.
When the #DouglassStateBank opened on January 22, 1947, it did so with much fanfare; the ceremony included a motorized parade that began at segregated #LincolnHighSchool in #KansasCityMO and ended at segregated #SumnerHighSchool, its Kansas counterpart that was six miles away.
In the almost 4 decades that the bank operated, it was the 17th largest Black owned bank and one of the earliest African-American owned banks in the Midwest. It spurred economic development throughout the Kansas City community and helped many Black residents become financially independent and first time homeowners. During its first 30 years of operation, the bank provided over $17 million in home mortgage loans and created well-paying employment opportunities for the Black community. Sadly, the bank closed in 1983, but its legacy lives on through digitized artifacts (like this undated matchbook and 1972 coin bank within the Nanny Jack & Co Archives), and oral history. For additional information, visit: https://archives.lib.ku.edu/repositories/3/resources/1542
Henry W. Sewing was interviewed for the Kansas City Regional Oral History Collection in April 1976. He spoke about many topics in his interview, including his upbringing in Texas, his early jobs, meeting his wife Ethel, and the opening of the Douglass State Bank. This particular quote stood out as it summed up his entire life and career:
"I don’t believe that you can keep a good man down if he is determined to stand up and go forward."
Courtesy of Nanny Jack & Co Archives
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