Bernice King Investor In Holladay Bank And Trust, First Black-Owned Minority Depository Institution

A Black investor group will purchase Holladay Bank and Trust, the first time a commercial bank will be a Black-owned Minority Depository Institution.

According to The Hill, Redemption Holding Company (RCH) will buy the Utah-based bank. The Hill added that the United States only had 50 Black-owned banks in 1976. In 2022, only 16 Black-owned banks remained. Holladay Bank and Trust will become the 17th Black-owned bank.

Ashley Bell, a former Trump adviser and small business administrator, will serve as RHC’s executive chairman and chief executive officer.

“Black banks make the American dream possible for all Americans by deploying resources that uniquely address the financial realities of communities that have been systematically excluded, overcharged, and under-capitalized for hundreds of years,” Bell said in a statement, according to The Hill.

“Redemption will serve as a lifeline to the next wave of Black and Brown first-time home buyers and small business entrepreneurs across the country,” Bell added.

Lawyer Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.s daughter, is an investor in the bank, as well as retired NFL player Dhani Jones. King and Jones will serve on the bank’s advisory board, The Hill reported.

“In my father’s last public address on April 3, 1968, he preached the imperative to accelerate the financial inclusion of Black Americans by supporting mission-driven Black banks—something he called a ‘bank-in movement,’” King said in a statement.

Kind continued: “More than half a century of struggle and incremental progress later, we’re making good on daddy’s call to bank-in by creating new centers of opportunity for people of color, starting with this Black-led bank acquisition. Redemption is just that: delivering families from the cycle of unjust financial exclusion and intergenerational poverty.”

RHC said in a statement that this deal “will reverse a negative trend a half-century in the making for America’s Black-owned banking sector.”