Brandon K. Winford - John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights

John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights

John Hervey Wheeler, Black Banking, and the Economic Struggle for Civil Rights

Brandon K. Winford

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Copyright 2020 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

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www.kentuckypress.com

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8131-7825-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8131-7828-8 (epub)

ISBN 978-0-8131-7827-1 (pdf)

Portions of were originally published as The Bright Sunshine of a New Day: John Hervey Wheeler, Black Business, and Civil Rights in North Carolina, 19291964, in the North Carolina Historical Review (July 2016): 23578.

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

To my parents, Ray and Cynthia Winford my sister, LaFonda Rae Griffin (19742007) my grandmother, Annie Belle Winford Heaggans (19242011)

Contents

Illustrations

Figures

Tables

Abbreviations

Introduction

The battle for freedom begins every morning.

John Hervey Wheeler

In November 1945, Mechanics and Farmers Bank (M&F Bank) cashier and vice president John Hervey Wheeler penned an article for the Tarheel Banker, the voice of the North Carolina Bankers Association, writing the South cannot hope to participate fully in the benefits of the approaching period without first committing itself to the full integration of its Negro population into all phases of its economy. As world war gave way to peace, he urged the states white financial power brokers to steer the region toward an end to Jim Crow segregation for economic reasons. With statistical data on black buying power in hand, Wheeler pointed to civil rights as the precondition for growth while placing race, power, and citizenship at the crux of his appeal for economic justice. He posed a challenge while pointing to the Souths greatest opportunity. His words were not meant only for white bankers in the Tar Heel State. He indeed spoke to the entire region, declaring that the South was at a crossroads where it had to choose between preservation of many of its time-honored mores [or] taking its full place in the American economy. To have both would be like eating its cake and having it too. His article exemplified a lifelong mission. In the mid-twentieth-century South, Wheeler used his keen economic sense as a banker and his legal skills as a civil rights lawyer to break down discriminatory barriers that kept blacks in a perpetual state of economic inferiority.