[Postcard Announcing a Stockholders Meeting for a Proposed African-American Bank in Winston-Salem]

Winston-Salem, N.C.: August 11, 1906. Very good.. Typed one-cent postcard, completed in manuscript. Some creasing and dust-soiling. Possibly a unique survival, this postcard is addressed "To the Stockholders of the Negro Bank" in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the late-summer of 1906. This "Important Notice" calls for all stockholders to meet on September 4 at the town's Knights of Pythias Hall. The officers of the bank encourage stockholders to "Come and hear the report of the Steering Committee. We have perfected plans whereby the bank may be opened at once. Come and bring what money you can on your stock." The postcard is signed at the bottom by John Blum, secretary, and the treasurer F.M. Kennedy, who have sent it to Rev. J.F. Curry of Winston-Salem "c/o Miss Addie Morris." We could locate little to no information on Kennedy or the recipient, Reverend Curry. The bank's treasurer, F.M. Kennedy was involved in trying to build an early hospital for African Americans and served as the principal of the Slater School some years later, but we could locate no mentions of his involvement in creating an African-American bank in Winston-Salem. In fact, we could locate no evidence that a "Negro Bank" was ever founded in the town; the Mechanics and Farmers Bank was established in Raleigh around this time, but was not apparently affiliated with a similar effort in Winston-Salem. The present postcard remains a curious link to establishing a proposed but perhaps never-realized African-American bank in the Jim Crow South.