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The $15 Trillion Wealth Truth · Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Money and Wealth with John O'Briant, a production
0:03
Speaker 1: of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey Hey,
0:14
Speaker 1: it's John O'Brien and this is the Money in Wealth
0:17
Speaker 1: podcast series on Black Effect Network on iHeartRadio, season three,
0:22
Speaker 1: and we're about to get popping here with a really
0:27
Speaker 1: important episode that deals with a theoretically tabot issue that
0:32
Speaker 1: I don't think needs to be which is the legacy
0:35
Speaker 1: of slavery. But not in the way in which you
0:38
Speaker 1: may think, I'm not dealing with the ethical issues or
0:42
Speaker 1: the moral issues, or you know, the responsibility issues. All
0:46
Speaker 1: those things historians have covered in much much greater degree
0:52
Speaker 1: in accuracy than I ever could. That's not my focus.
0:56
Speaker 1: My focus is, and I think this is a conservative number,
1:00
Speaker 1: the fifteen trillion dollar plus secret that was hiding in
1:08
Speaker 1: plain sight. I think you think the number is as
1:11
Speaker 1: shockingly high as forty trillion dollars when you think about
1:15
Speaker 1: missed economic opportunity. But this is the fifteen trillion dollars
1:19
Speaker 1: secret the economics of slavery in the wealth gap. Imagine
1:25
Speaker 1: it's eighteen fifty eight. A cotton planner in Mississippi has
1:31
Speaker 1: just finished his harvest bales of cotton. Thousands of pounds
1:38
Speaker 1: of it are loaded onto steamboats heading down the Mississippi River.
1:44
Speaker 1: That cotton travels south to New Orleans, the busiest cotton
1:49
Speaker 1: port in America. But the journey doesn't stop there. Merchants
1:59
Speaker 1: in New Orleans or New Orleans anew who you're from,
2:04
Speaker 1: where you're from, and how you pronounce it, arranged financing
2:09
Speaker 1: with banks in New York. Insurance companies ensure the ship
2:15
Speaker 1: the shipment. The cotton is loaded into a Transatlantic ship
2:22
Speaker 1: bound for Liverpool, England. Weeks later it arrives in the
2:29
Speaker 1: largest contentrading market.
2:32
Speaker 2: In the world.
2:35
Speaker 1: From Liverpool, it travels to textile mills in Manchester, England,
2:42
Speaker 1: where machines spin it into fabric. That fabric is sold
2:49
Speaker 1: across Europe and around the world and even back in
2:55
Speaker 1: America and the Americas. Now here's the extraordinary part about this.
3:04
Speaker 1: At every step of that journey, from the plantation to
3:10
Speaker 1: the banks, to the ships to the factories, money is
3:19
Speaker 1: being made, wealth is being gained. Plantation owners profit A
3:29
Speaker 1: little segue here, only three to five percent. Let's be
3:33
Speaker 1: liberal and say five percent of all whites in the
3:37
Speaker 1: South owned more than fifty slaves. So it was just
3:41
Speaker 1: a small portion of the European population that were slave owners.
3:48
Speaker 1: So wing to give proper context here, wasn't every white
3:51
Speaker 1: person or even most white people who owned slaves. It
3:54
Speaker 1: was the elite class. For for whomever that fact is important.
4:04
Speaker 1: Plantations owners profited, merchants profited, banks profited. Any bank that's
4:17
Speaker 1: older than one hundred and seventy five years old had
4:23
Speaker 1: a stake and a hand in all likelihood the slave trade.
4:29
Speaker 1: Because they took back they put loans on plantations and properties,
4:36
Speaker 1: and part of that security for that loan, part of
4:38
Speaker 1: the collateral was the barn and the land and the machinery,
4:44
Speaker 1: and part, unfortunately of the machinery were slaves. So you'll
4:49
Speaker 1: find banks that are certainly two hundred years old, the
4:52
Speaker 1: oldest banks in America, who have human beings on their books.
5:00
Speaker 1: Don't blame the leadership of the day had nothing to
5:02
Speaker 1: do with it. But it is a sad fact that
5:06
Speaker 1: everybody was involved in this business. And this only gets
5:11
Speaker 1: deeper and more interesting. And for those who are interested
5:14
Speaker 1: in blame, there's enough to go around. By the way
5:16
Speaker 1: you had, I mean, how do you think the slaves
5:18
Speaker 1: got from the central of Africa to the coast right.
5:21
Speaker 1: It was blacks that are capturing other blacks, and tribes
5:24
Speaker 1: didn't know they were selling them the slavery. But my
5:26
Speaker 1: point is that tribes captured are the tribes, and they
5:29
Speaker 1: didn't know what they were doing, but they some of
5:31
Speaker 1: them sold them unconsciously.
5:33
Speaker 2: In a slavery.
5:34
Speaker 1: You had Indians and in India slave traders, you had
5:36
Speaker 1: Arab slave traders. You had I'm sure Asian. I don't
5:41
Speaker 1: have that fact handy, but I'm sure they were involved
5:44
Speaker 1: in some way, and you could put quotation marks and
5:47
Speaker 1: say that Asians were also related to Indians and certainly Europeans,
5:56
Speaker 1: of course, I'm going back to the Asian example for
5:59
Speaker 1: a minute. It was some mean it hit my brain
6:01
Speaker 1: about why there might be a natural or unnatural connection there.
6:05
Speaker 1: But the point is everybody was in the business, so
6:10
Speaker 1: to speak. It was unfortunately rather normal at that time,
6:15
Speaker 1: and people just wanted to profit from it moral socide.
6:21
Speaker 1: So insurance companies profited after banks, textile manufacture is profited.
6:29
Speaker 1: So my point of the racial thing was it wasn't
6:32
Speaker 1: really racial. It wasn't as I keep saying black or white,
6:34
Speaker 1: as in rais or red or blue, and as in
6:36
Speaker 1: politics today it was green, and right, it's always been green.
6:40
Speaker 1: We just need to turn bad capitalism into good capitalism. Right,
6:44
Speaker 1: bad debt financing slaves into good debt financing the purchase
6:48
Speaker 1: of companies and growing industries, and and and us going
6:53
Speaker 1: from being an asset to owning assets, and us being
6:56
Speaker 1: African Americans. My second great grandfather and second great grandmother
7:00
Speaker 1: there were slaves. My grandfather on my father's side was
7:03
Speaker 1: a sharecropper RB.
7:05
Speaker 2: Smith.
7:06
Speaker 1: My next book, Capitalism for All, lays all of this
7:09
Speaker 1: out about where do we go from here, which was
7:11
Speaker 1: doctor King's last book before he was assassinated. So banks profit,
7:16
Speaker 1: insurance companies profited, textile manufactures profited. Entire global economy was
7:22
Speaker 1: on the move, all connected to one shipment of cotton.
7:28
Speaker 1: Let that sink in, and almost all of that cotton
7:32
Speaker 1: was picked by enslaved labor. By eighteen sixty, cotton made
7:38
Speaker 1: up more than half of all American exports. I'll say
7:42
Speaker 1: that again, and I'll say it a little slower so
7:44
Speaker 1: it sticks. By eighteen sixty, cotton made up more than
7:49
Speaker 1: half of all American exports, and the market value of
7:53
Speaker 1: enslaved people had grown to three billion dollars In eighteen
7:57
Speaker 1: sixty money. Just for context, that's more valuable than all
8:04
Speaker 1: of the currency of that day, all of the precious
8:07
Speaker 1: metals of that day, all of the railroads of that day,
8:12
Speaker 1: all of the banks of that day, all of the
8:15
Speaker 1: insurance companies of that day, hold on together the largest
8:22
Speaker 1: financial asset in the United States. Enslave people, free talented labor.
8:29
Speaker 1: I say talented because some would have you believed that
8:32
Speaker 1: slaves or some lazy are blacks or lazy they would
8:36
Speaker 1: say today, but they would say back then, slaves were lazy,
8:38
Speaker 1: they were any human, they were untalented. No one goes
8:42
Speaker 1: halfway around the world at enormous expense as an entrepreneur
8:48
Speaker 1: or a business builder to take a risk on useless assets.
8:55
Speaker 1: You do that because you have no choice, or you
8:57
Speaker 1: believe is the best choice. And we were agricultural geniuses
9:02
Speaker 1: who could take dead soil and bring it back to life.
9:05
Speaker 1: And where was the cotton rooted best? Where did it
9:13
Speaker 1: grow best? And hot, humid soil hard to cultivate and
9:21
Speaker 1: bring back to life? The Caribbean, Latin America, but specifically
9:28
Speaker 1: the best area it appeared the southern states of the
9:31
Speaker 1: United States of America. And my poor white brothers and
9:35
Speaker 1: sisters then from Europe who were brought here as indentured
9:39
Speaker 1: servants along and put aside along with blacks. By the way,
9:42
Speaker 1: there were white indigent servants as well, there were blacks.
9:45
Speaker 1: The first indigent service were black and white. That's a
9:47
Speaker 1: whole other podcast I did explaining how race is literally
9:52
Speaker 1: made up in America in the last four hundred years
9:57
Speaker 1: and sorry made it race. The racial word white eight
10:00
Speaker 1: was literally made up in a world is five billion
10:04
Speaker 1: years old, and human existence which goes back you know,
10:09
Speaker 1: you know, modern human existence a few thousand, a couple
10:11
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years old, and then you know primitive human
10:14
Speaker 1: couple hundred you know, let's just say, let's just be
10:16
Speaker 1: easy to say a couple of million years ago, right,
10:21
Speaker 1: but and enlightenment three thousand years ago, right, Traders six
10:26
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. But somehow in the global world the
10:29
Speaker 1: racial word white was created four hundred years ago. In America.
10:35
Speaker 1: It was for commercial reasons, by the way. It was
10:39
Speaker 1: to separate blacks and whites who were getting along, because
10:42
Speaker 1: they could not have them be friends, because they said,
10:46
Speaker 1: you can have a race ride, you cannot have a
10:48
Speaker 1: class ride, because we're the class so you want to
10:51
Speaker 1: know an answer is something you keep following the money,
10:54
Speaker 1: and nine times out of ten you take the emotions
10:57
Speaker 1: out of it, by the way, and follow the money,
10:58
Speaker 1: you'll get your answer. So Africans who became African Americans
11:06
Speaker 1: four hundred thousand slaves who turned into four million because
11:08
Speaker 1: they cultivated this group, because they were so profitable, they
11:12
Speaker 1: were the only group that could take this debt. So
11:14
Speaker 1: let bring it back to life and produce these crops
11:16
Speaker 1: of gold, cotton, tobacco, et cetera. Anyway, the largest financial
11:20
Speaker 1: asset in the United States was, without a question, in
11:24
Speaker 1: slave labor, the equivalent of ten to fifteen trillion dollars today.
11:30
Speaker 1: Some would argue you twenty one trillion dollars. I'm giving
11:33
Speaker 1: you the conservative number, which means that to understand wealth
11:36
Speaker 1: in American today, you first have to understand how wealth
11:39
Speaker 1: was built in America yesterday. So today we're going to
11:45
Speaker 1: talk about the economics of slavery from a non emotional,
11:49
Speaker 1: non blaming, non polarizing perspective. Just the math. I like
11:55
Speaker 1: math because it doesn't have an opinion. Again, my quoting
11:58
Speaker 1: my friend Melody Hopson, who's that that's her quote, that's
12:01
Speaker 1: a great quote, very illuminative. This is a story that
12:04
Speaker 1: Americans were never talked in school, not to assign blame,
12:08
Speaker 1: as I said, but to understand the system, because once
12:13
Speaker 1: you understand the system, you can learn how to win
12:16
Speaker 1: in it. So welcome back to money and wealth, everybody,
12:23
Speaker 1: And today I'm gonna talk to you about something that
12:25
Speaker 1: most Americans were never talked, not because it isn't important,
12:30
Speaker 1: but because it's uncomfortable. Today we're going to talk about
12:34
Speaker 1: the economics of slavery. Now, let me be clear before
12:37
Speaker 1: we get into this. This episode is not about blame.
12:41
Speaker 1: I'm said this a half dozen times and when I
12:43
Speaker 1: underscore and cause people are clipping this in segments. Is
12:47
Speaker 1: not about blame as in a distraction. It's not about
12:51
Speaker 1: making anybody feel guilty. Even it's not about victimhood. I'm
12:56
Speaker 1: no victim. I'm a victor and so are you this
13:00
Speaker 1: episode and certainly my forefathers and four mothers, my family
13:06
Speaker 1: who weren't slaves themselves. My second grand grandmother left slavery,
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Speaker 1: left escaped slavery, and went on to buy a house,
13:13
Speaker 1: didn't have a mortgage on it, had a border renter,
13:16
Speaker 1: which means she was she turned into a capitalist It
13:19
Speaker 1: is such an inspiring story. My second grand grandfather, George
13:23
Speaker 1: Young on my father's side, that was my mother's side
13:26
Speaker 1: of the lady on my father's side, went on to
13:28
Speaker 1: answer Abram Lincoln's call for the Emancipation Proclamation and went
13:33
Speaker 1: on to protect the people of Memphis, Tennessee and the
13:38
Speaker 1: black regimen. One of seven thousand black officers. He was
13:41
Speaker 1: protecting people who were not really all that throat about
13:45
Speaker 1: protecting him. So there's my social justice bones and my
13:49
Speaker 1: capitalist bones all in one story. So this episode's about
13:55
Speaker 1: understanding the economics of America, because if you want to
13:59
Speaker 1: understand wealth in America today, you have to understand how
14:02
Speaker 1: wealth was built yesterday. And once you understand this story,
14:05
Speaker 1: we can talk about how to build wealth going forward.
14:09
Speaker 1: Let me start with the statistic that shocks me and
14:13
Speaker 1: will shock you the first time you hear it. In
14:15
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty, just before the Civil War, the single largest
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Speaker 1: financial asset in the United States of America was enslaved people.
14:25
Speaker 1: And the wealthiest city in America was Notacha's, Mississippi. I'll
14:30
Speaker 1: repeat that. The wealthiest city in America, and some would
14:32
Speaker 1: say the wealthiest city in the world at that time
14:35
Speaker 1: was Notch's Mississippi small footnote. Part of Wall Street started
14:41
Speaker 1: in Montgomery, Alabama. That's where some very well known investment houses,
14:47
Speaker 1: including names you would know today, began there because that's
14:50
Speaker 1: where the money was being made. So the largest asset
14:54
Speaker 1: was not railroads, It was not banks, or land, or
14:58
Speaker 1: factories or even just sort of talented human capital, human beings.
15:05
Speaker 1: It was enslaved people of Historians estimate nearly four million
15:10
Speaker 1: enslaved people in America had a combined market value of
15:13
Speaker 1: about three billion dollars in eighteen sixty. Now that number
15:16
Speaker 1: might not sound enormous today we mentioned a billion.
15:19
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound enormous.
15:20
Speaker 1: We're living in strange times, by the way, But when
15:23
Speaker 1: economists compared to the size of the economy at that time,
15:27
Speaker 1: it would have been somewhere between ten and fifteen trillion
15:30
Speaker 1: dollars a day conservatively, dude, And giving you some context
15:34
Speaker 1: for that, the US economy is about thirty trillion, with
15:36
Speaker 1: the largest economy in the world, the market value of
15:40
Speaker 1: the stock market, which is a fifty trillion plus. Yeah,
15:45
Speaker 1: it's a big number, right, And this is you know,
15:50
Speaker 1: let's just say half of the US GDP. So the
15:56
Speaker 1: largest concentration of wealth in America in eighteen sixty was
15:59
Speaker 1: an asset, if you want to call it.
16:01
Speaker 2: That quotation marks worth the.
16:03
Speaker 1: Equivalent of say, fifteen trillion dollars today. That means enslave
16:08
Speaker 1: people represented more wealth than all the railroads, all the factories,
16:12
Speaker 1: or the banks in the country combined. And here's the
16:16
Speaker 1: part that most people don't know. And slave people were
16:19
Speaker 1: treated not just as labor, but as a capital asset.
16:24
Speaker 1: They could be mortgaged, ensured, us as loan collateral, bought
16:32
Speaker 1: and sold in financial markets, basically a form of what
16:35
Speaker 1: we call today's securitization. This is why historians today say
16:39
Speaker 1: something important. Slavery wasn't just a social system, it was
16:44
Speaker 1: an economic system. And I'll go one step further and
16:47
Speaker 1: tell you that the Civil War was an economic dispute.
16:51
Speaker 1: It was the South resisting northern economic domination. The North
16:56
Speaker 1: was moving to industrialization, factories and all that stuff. And
17:01
Speaker 1: the immigrants of that day, the left behind and the
17:04
Speaker 1: thrown aways of that day who came in America, the Polish,
17:07
Speaker 1: the Italians, the Jews, whoever you want to think about
17:13
Speaker 1: of that day, who were not considered sort of the
17:15
Speaker 1: upper class. They were coming in and trying to strive
17:18
Speaker 1: and grow and build things. But they're heading north along
17:21
Speaker 1: with industrializations. So those economies were growing, and the Homestead
17:25
Speaker 1: Act gave land away heading west, and so the West
17:28
Speaker 1: and the North were growing.
17:29
Speaker 2: In the South was.
17:30
Speaker 1: Stuck in an old model of slavery, even though it
17:34
Speaker 1: was where half of all millionaires, more than half of
17:37
Speaker 1: all millionaires lived in the South, specifically Mississippi. Do you
17:41
Speaker 1: know Mississippi was the wealthiest state in America before the
17:46
Speaker 1: Civil War. It's the poorer state in America today. And
17:51
Speaker 1: I've got family there, so I want them to come
17:54
Speaker 1: up from where they are now. And that's why again
17:57
Speaker 1: written this book Capitalism for All that's coming out soon,
17:59
Speaker 1: that hopefully business plan for all of us. Now, let's
18:02
Speaker 1: talk about cotton, because cotton was the engine of that
18:07
Speaker 1: economic system. By eighteen sixty, cotton made up about sixty
18:15
Speaker 1: percent of all US ex sports. Think about that, more
18:19
Speaker 1: than half of everything sold to the world came from
18:22
Speaker 1: one product, cotton, and almost all of that cotton was
18:27
Speaker 1: grown and processed by enslaved labor. In fact, the United
18:32
Speaker 1: States produced roughly three quarters of the world's cotton supply,
18:38
Speaker 1: which means the global textile industry, the biggest manufacturing industry
18:43
Speaker 1: on Earth at that time, dependent on American cotton.
18:47
Speaker 2: They call it king cotton.
18:49
Speaker 1: Actually it was the gold of that time, the platinum
18:53
Speaker 1: of that time, the ai of that time, if you
18:56
Speaker 1: want to call it that, artificial intelligence, the capital market,
19:03
Speaker 1: king or queen, and that cotton came primarily from places
19:09
Speaker 1: like Mississippi, where my family is from, Alabama, where my
19:13
Speaker 1: family is from, Louisiana, where Ambassador Andrew Young's family is from,
19:19
Speaker 1: and Georgia, where again my family is from. This is
19:23
Speaker 1: why people at the time called cotton again king cotton.
19:29
Speaker 1: Cotton wasn't just agriculture. Cotton was the energy source of
19:33
Speaker 1: the global economy. It was the oil of the nineteenth century.
19:39
Speaker 1: And that cotton economy created enormous wealth, which leads to
19:43
Speaker 1: another surprising fact. Most Americans today think of Mississippi as
19:49
Speaker 1: one of the poorest state states in the South, and
19:54
Speaker 1: really it's the poorest state arguably in America, in the country.
19:59
Speaker 1: But this fact is worth underscoring again. In eighteen sixty,
20:04
Speaker 1: Mississippi was actually the richest state in America per capita.
20:10
Speaker 1: Let that sink in the richest state. Why because the
20:15
Speaker 1: Mississippi Delta produced some of the most profitable cotton plantations
20:20
Speaker 1: in the world. Some plantation owners controlled thousands of acres
20:26
Speaker 1: of land and hundreds of enslaved workers. They were even
20:32
Speaker 1: a town called as I mentioned earlier. But I'm an
20:34
Speaker 1: underscore here Nachez, Mississippi Natcchez, if you'd like to look
20:41
Speaker 1: it up for yourself. At that time, Nachez was one
20:44
Speaker 1: of the highest concentration of millionaires in the United States
20:48
Speaker 1: of America, the richest city in America. But there's something
20:51
Speaker 1: important to understand here. That wealth was extremely concentrated. Only
20:58
Speaker 1: a small percentage of white Southerners actually owned and slaved people,
21:02
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, and an even smaller percentage own
21:05
Speaker 1: large plantations. So it's no different than the uber wealth
21:10
Speaker 1: you see today. It's just the uber wealth we see today,
21:13
Speaker 1: I believe is more responsible, more authentic, more I mean,
21:18
Speaker 1: for what you ever think about it, it's they're not
21:20
Speaker 1: engaging in slavery at least not the folks I do
21:24
Speaker 1: business with are not out in public. It's not a
21:26
Speaker 1: mainstream industry. No legitimate business person of any ilk is
21:31
Speaker 1: doing that today. So we have made progress from immoral
21:35
Speaker 1: ends to at least neutral ends, if not moral ends.
21:38
Speaker 1: I'm trying to move us into a moral economy. Good capitalism,
21:42
Speaker 1: our capitalism can serve all of God's children and take
21:45
Speaker 1: the bottom third and lift them up and put the
21:46
Speaker 1: ladder to the bottom and so you can climb to
21:48
Speaker 1: the top. So that folks don't resent rich people. They
21:51
Speaker 1: want to become one. Back to the story. So when
21:56
Speaker 1: we talk about southern wealth in eighteen sixty, were really
22:00
Speaker 1: talking about the wealth of a very small elite class.
22:03
Speaker 1: But that elite class controlled massive economic power. Now here's
22:08
Speaker 1: where the story gets even more interesting because the cotton
22:12
Speaker 1: economy wasn't just Southern, it was global. Let me explain
22:18
Speaker 1: how the system worked. Cotton grown on plantations Mississippi or
22:23
Speaker 1: Alabama would be shipped down the Mississippi River again the
22:27
Speaker 1: New Orleans as an example for the New Orleans, it
22:30
Speaker 1: would be exported to Liverpool, England. Liverpool was the financial
22:34
Speaker 1: center of the global cotton trade. If you didn't know that.
22:37
Speaker 1: By the way, did you know that Birmingham, Alabama was
22:41
Speaker 1: named after Birmingham, England because it was an industrial center
22:45
Speaker 1: in the world of Birmingham, England for cotton and Birmingham
22:49
Speaker 1: Alabama was an industrial center in America for slavery and cotton,
22:54
Speaker 1: and you know railroads ran through it, just like you
22:57
Speaker 1: know in Birmingham anyway. How interesting today the Mayor of
23:03
Speaker 1: Birmingham is a black man who is doing actually what
23:09
Speaker 1: Woffin Woodfin, who's a very good man and doing a
23:12
Speaker 1: very good job. I think he just won his third
23:14
Speaker 1: re election, which is unprecedented in a very diverse place
23:18
Speaker 1: like Birmingham. In operation hope. I don't think he would
23:21
Speaker 1: mind me saying this is responsible. Well, he's responsible for
23:23
Speaker 1: him becoming a homeowner, but we facilitated it through our
23:27
Speaker 1: open side program that Mayor Randall Woodfin uh uh partnered
23:32
Speaker 1: with in the for the employees of the City of
23:35
Speaker 1: Birmingham full circle and through and with a mortgage through
23:39
Speaker 1: Region's Bank, our partner in that area for hope inside
23:43
Speaker 1: good capitalism, doing well by doing good. I think he's
23:46
Speaker 1: a first homeowner, homeowner in his family and now a father.
23:49
Speaker 1: So we can have rainbows after storms. In fact, as
23:53
Speaker 1: a scientific fact, you cannot have a rainbow without a
23:55
Speaker 1: storm first. So it would be exported to Liverpool, England.
24:00
Speaker 1: Liverpool was the financial center of the global cotton trade
24:02
Speaker 1: and from Liverpool cotton went to textile mills and Manchester
24:05
Speaker 1: and other industrial cities in Britain. Those mills turned cotton
24:10
Speaker 1: into fabric okay, and that fabric was sold.
24:16
Speaker 2: All over the world. But there was another piece in
24:21
Speaker 2: the system.
24:23
Speaker 1: Finance banks in New York finance the cotton trade investment
24:30
Speaker 1: banks in places like Montgomery, Alabama, facilitated portions of that
24:37
Speaker 1: financing activity. Specifically as relates to cotton banks in New
24:42
Speaker 1: York finance, the cotton trade insurance companies insured shipments. Shipping
24:47
Speaker 1: companies transported goods, merchants issued credit. Some of the early
24:53
Speaker 1: financial firms that later became part of Wall Street actually
24:57
Speaker 1: began in the cotton economy. Let's give you some examples.
25:03
Speaker 1: Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers started in Montgomery, Alabama as a
25:07
Speaker 1: cotton trading business. Cotton was so valuable that in some
25:12
Speaker 1: cases it actually functioned like currency. So when we talk
25:16
Speaker 1: about slavery, we're also talking about global capitalism. Cotton plantations,
25:22
Speaker 1: New York finands, British factories, global markets all connected. Now
25:31
Speaker 1: here's another economic reality that rarely gets discussed. When slavery
25:35
Speaker 1: ended in eighteen sixty and by the way I want
25:41
Speaker 1: to commend. There's one particular bank. I'm thinking about two
25:44
Speaker 1: banks where they acknowledged their history where they had some
25:49
Speaker 1: involvement with slavery. So the precursor to truest Bank, Sun Trust,
25:54
Speaker 1: the precursor to all those. I think it was Trust.
25:57
Speaker 1: I think it was Trust Company anyway. I don't know
25:59
Speaker 1: the name before Sun Truls that, I can't remember it
26:02
Speaker 1: off the top of my head. But the CEO there,
26:04
Speaker 1: Bill Rogers, owned this history and didn't have to. I'm
26:09
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent sure that my friend Jamie Diamond and
26:12
Speaker 1: JP Morgan Chase owned their history because there are records
26:16
Speaker 1: of enslave people in those banks records as well, And
26:20
Speaker 1: there are many others who would fit this criteria, and
26:24
Speaker 1: the leaders have stepped up and acknowledged in most of
26:28
Speaker 1: those cases. Now here's another economic reality that really gets discussed.
26:35
Speaker 2: Also.
26:35
Speaker 1: When slavery ended in eighteen sixty five, the loss to
26:41
Speaker 1: the South was almost complete. The South loss's largest asset class.
26:49
Speaker 1: Almost overnight, the three billion dollar slave asset market disappeared.
26:58
Speaker 1: If you want a joke about it's not but you
27:00
Speaker 1: wonder why people are upset. You know, in the traditional South,
27:05
Speaker 1: you lose fifteen trillion dollars overnight. See how you're feeling,
27:09
Speaker 1: whether you're moral or not, it's it is the children.
27:13
Speaker 1: And those people are like, I didn't do anything about this.
27:15
Speaker 1: Why am I broke?
27:16
Speaker 2: Now?
27:16
Speaker 1: Why can't I get my carriage? Mercedes? Mercedes was a carriage,
27:22
Speaker 1: was a Mercedes that day? Why can't I get my
27:24
Speaker 1: farmhouse mansion? The farmhouse was a mansion of that day,
27:28
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Why can't I get
27:30
Speaker 1: my horse as in horsepower, you know, the ferrari of
27:35
Speaker 1: that day? Because with my daddy and my granddaddy did
27:38
Speaker 1: ain't nothing to do with that. So the economy collapses.
27:46
Speaker 1: That collapse devastated the Southern economy. But something else happened
27:50
Speaker 1: to four million newly freed people entered the economy with
27:54
Speaker 1: no capital at all. In fact, they had no land,
27:59
Speaker 1: they had no financial assets, they had no access to credit.
28:03
Speaker 1: They it was even illegal to teach them to read
28:06
Speaker 1: before the end of slavery. So now you're walking in
28:09
Speaker 1: with no literacy. And there was a by extension, of course,
28:14
Speaker 1: no access to banks. And you may or may not know,
28:17
Speaker 1: but I'm tied in a little bit here. I'll perate
28:19
Speaker 1: you Hope's tied in a little bit here to this history.
28:21
Speaker 1: We went into the Treasury Department in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.
28:26
Speaker 1: It was twenty fifteen we started this conversation. I'm wann
28:28
Speaker 1: thank jenn Ay Rosco on my team for pointing me
28:31
Speaker 1: in this direction, and in black women in the Treasury
28:33
Speaker 1: Department for encouraging me to pursue this. But we ultimately
28:38
Speaker 1: got the United States government to rename the US Treasury
28:42
Speaker 1: annexed building that's across from the Treasury Department, it's across
28:45
Speaker 1: from the White House, across from Lafont Plaza. We got
28:49
Speaker 1: them to rename that the Freedmen's Bank Building in honor
28:54
Speaker 1: of freed slaves who put all their money in a
28:55
Speaker 1: bank charter to teach free slaves about money after the
28:58
Speaker 1: Civil War. The only American citizen or to trigger the
29:01
Speaker 1: renaming or inspire the renaming of a bank on the
29:04
Speaker 1: White House campus in US history through our work at
29:07
Speaker 1: Operation Hope and my instigation and inspiration by Jenney Roscoe
29:11
Speaker 1: and these black women at Treasury who encouraged me to
29:14
Speaker 1: do it, and Secretary Jack lou made it happen, along
29:20
Speaker 1: with others who were supportive This was during the Obama administration.
29:25
Speaker 2: And it sits to this day.
29:26
Speaker 1: It stands to this day as attribute and the testimony
29:29
Speaker 1: to unfinished business which we are in our own way
29:31
Speaker 1: at operation of trying to finish. And that was that
29:35
Speaker 1: light legislation for the Freeman's Bank was signed in the
29:37
Speaker 1: law on March third, eighteen sixty five, on the last
29:40
Speaker 1: day of Abraham Lincoln's first term, after he won re election,
29:45
Speaker 1: in part, in large part because of the extended history
29:48
Speaker 1: of Atlanta, because the last battle on the war, the
29:51
Speaker 1: Civil War was at the Battle of Atlanta, where the
29:55
Speaker 1: Union army burned Atlanta to the ground to cut off
29:58
Speaker 1: the infrastructure, and the momentum and the confidence of the
30:01
Speaker 1: Confederate army which worked, and the march to the Sea
30:05
Speaker 1: that followed that had former slave people now forming and
30:08
Speaker 1: slave people following Secretary of Wars General Stanton and into freedom.
30:15
Speaker 1: And they went to Savannah, Georgia. In general the general
30:22
Speaker 1: who was sent there, I believe, I believe it was
30:25
Speaker 1: General Sherman, negotiate with twenty former black slaves for you
30:29
Speaker 1: know what they wanted after slavery, and they said, we
30:31
Speaker 1: want land, we want to do for ourselves and that
30:33
Speaker 1: they had to forty acres and forty acres and a mule,
30:36
Speaker 1: and they worked it so hard they said, my god,
30:38
Speaker 1: there's so industrials.
30:39
Speaker 2: Give them a mule.
30:40
Speaker 1: That was January February eighteen sixty five. March eighteen sixty five,
30:46
Speaker 1: here comes the Bank, the Freedom Is Bank, charted to
30:48
Speaker 1: teach free slaves about money. Abraham Lincoln promises blacks the
30:52
Speaker 1: right to vote, and Booth said that's a bridge too far.
30:55
Speaker 1: You'll never give another free to another speech, and he
30:59
Speaker 1: was assassinated April eighteen sixty five, a month after he
31:02
Speaker 1: signed the Freeman's Bureau Actor, which gave created infrastructure, hospital, schools, etc.
31:08
Speaker 1: For newly enslaved newly free enslaved formally enslaved people, including
31:12
Speaker 1: the bank that then Frederick Douglass went on to try
31:16
Speaker 1: to run after Lincoln's assassination, and unfortunate without Lincoln as
31:21
Speaker 1: a protector, the bank failed in eighteen and it failed
31:26
Speaker 1: in total in eighteen seventy seven. Although it was failing
31:28
Speaker 1: for some time after, it was gained by mainstream interests
31:33
Speaker 1: in Washington, d c.
31:34
Speaker 2: Who used it as their.
31:35
Speaker 1: Own personal piggy bank, along with local cashiers in offices
31:39
Speaker 1: throughout the country who were financially illiterate. That just proves
31:44
Speaker 1: good intentions alone doesn't matter. So there was no access
31:48
Speaker 1: to the land, or financial assets, or education or credit.
31:52
Speaker 1: I think about what that means economically for generations. Black
31:57
Speaker 1: labor had helped produce enormous wealth, but ownership of that
32:03
Speaker 1: wealth belonged to someone else. In fact, even after the
32:07
Speaker 1: forty Acres and Mule when General when President Johnson I
32:14
Speaker 1: believe his name is took over after Abraham Lincoln, but
32:17
Speaker 1: a Southern segregation is he gave the land. He reversed
32:20
Speaker 1: forty acres and the mule within two or three years
32:23
Speaker 1: and gave that land back to the segregation of his
32:25
Speaker 1: families who owned it before. So if you wonder why
32:27
Speaker 1: you have this wealth gap today, I'm telling you part
32:30
Speaker 1: of that stories not that people didn't work hard. You
32:34
Speaker 1: can run really fast, but if you're on quicksand it's
32:38
Speaker 1: hard to get traction, that matters.
32:43
Speaker 2: This is why.
32:44
Speaker 1: Economic opportunity after the Civil War became so important. The
32:48
Speaker 1: first reconstruction, second reconstruction was the Civil rights movement. I
32:51
Speaker 1: believe we're in the third reconstruction today. I covered that
32:54
Speaker 1: also in my book. That's coming out now capitalism for all,
32:57
Speaker 1: but many of those opportunities were limited, limited by black codes,
33:02
Speaker 1: share cropping systems, segregation, red lining. Red lining happened in
33:09
Speaker 1: the in earnest. It happened by people. Think it happened
33:12
Speaker 1: by banks. Nope, it happened banks discriminated against it, for sure.
33:16
Speaker 1: But it was the federal government that actually created red lining,
33:20
Speaker 1: the FHA and I can't make this up, and it
33:24
Speaker 1: literally sent a signal to banks that we're not ensuring
33:28
Speaker 1: areas that have these red lines, that are in these
33:30
Speaker 1: red lines, red marked areas, so go invest someplace else
33:35
Speaker 1: will ensure those. So that was the suburbs and other areas,
33:39
Speaker 1: and so they are urban areas where blacks had migrated
33:42
Speaker 1: to were considered red lined and had no gotten, no
33:47
Speaker 1: access to capital. So the banks don't like risk, and
33:51
Speaker 1: they were uncomfortable blacks to begin with, but they certainly
33:54
Speaker 1: wen't going to do it if it weren't incentivized to lend.
33:56
Speaker 1: And so they lent where people look like them, where
33:59
Speaker 1: areas where the mortgages were guaranteed by the federal government.
34:03
Speaker 1: Think about that. It really is common sense why they
34:07
Speaker 1: did what they did and didn't do Why they did,
34:10
Speaker 1: didn't and didn't do what they didn't do. You don't
34:13
Speaker 1: have to be a racist to make that decision, although
34:15
Speaker 1: being a racist probably helped make those decisions and back
34:19
Speaker 1: those In those days, banks were family owned and privately
34:23
Speaker 1: And do you know, by the way, there was currencies,
34:25
Speaker 1: like hundreds of currencies. It wasn't a US currency to
34:28
Speaker 1: you know, unified US currency at that time. This was
34:31
Speaker 1: you know, in eighteen hundreds you had you know, the
34:33
Speaker 1: Bank of Joe's currency and Jackson Grocery Stores currency.
34:36
Speaker 2: It was a mess. Anyway.
34:39
Speaker 1: All of this affected access to capital and ownership for
34:43
Speaker 1: obvious reasons. So now let's bring this conversation to today,
34:50
Speaker 1: because history only matters if it helps us understand the present.
34:54
Speaker 1: The lesson here is not about victimhood. It's not about blame.
35:00
Speaker 1: It's about ownership. A lesson is about ownership. For centuries,
35:06
Speaker 1: black labor produced wealth but did not control the capital.
35:13
Speaker 1: Which is why today I often say something simple, the
35:16
Speaker 1: next civil rights movement in America must be about money
35:19
Speaker 1: and wealth. That financial literacy is the civil rights issue
35:23
Speaker 1: of this generation. If you don't know better, you can't
35:25
Speaker 1: do better. In a blind town or one eyed man's
35:28
Speaker 1: king if you don't. If it is an old Southern saying,
35:33
Speaker 1: no matter how much I love you, my son or
35:34
Speaker 1: my daughter, if I don't have wisdom, I can only
35:37
Speaker 1: give you my own ignorance. And so out of love
35:39
Speaker 1: we pass down bad habits from generation to generation. So
35:45
Speaker 1: it's not the agenda to day is not just about jobs.
35:48
Speaker 1: It's not just about wages. It's about ownership. About credit scores,
35:53
Speaker 1: seven hundred credit scores plus to be particular, to be specific,
35:57
Speaker 1: because the computer just says, yes, it's seven hundred plus
36:00
Speaker 1: us when you go to it at midnight to ask
36:01
Speaker 1: for a thirty thousand dollars loan with a job. It's
36:05
Speaker 1: about entrepreneurship, is about is about home ownership, It's about investment.
36:12
Speaker 1: It's about mastering artificial intelligence and upskilling for the jobs
36:17
Speaker 1: of the future which haven't come yet. But that's a
36:20
Speaker 1: different podcast for the other day. Because the real power
36:22
Speaker 1: in capitalism is ownership of assets, and that asset starts
36:26
Speaker 1: with you. That is why financial literacy matters. This is
36:30
Speaker 1: why credit score literacy matters. This is why entrepreneurship literacy matters.
36:37
Speaker 1: This is why AI literacy matters. The untapped economic power
36:45
Speaker 1: of you. Let me close with this thought. In eighteen
36:51
Speaker 1: sixty the most valuable asset in the American economy was
36:55
Speaker 1: enslaved people, human potential that was exploited but not empowered. Today,
37:02
Speaker 1: the greatest untapped asset in America is still human potential.
37:08
Speaker 1: But now we have an opportunity to do something different
37:13
Speaker 1: to unlock that potential through education, through financial literacy, through
37:22
Speaker 1: access to capital, true capital access. Not a program, but
37:28
Speaker 1: a platform for prosperity, because not people. Because people feel
37:32
Speaker 1: bad or guiltier, feel sorry for you. Know, they see
37:35
Speaker 1: you as a market opportunity and want to benefit from
37:38
Speaker 1: you in fair exchange is no robbery. I don't want
37:42
Speaker 1: to hand out. I want to hand up. I want
37:43
Speaker 1: the James Brown version of affirmative action. Open the door,
37:48
Speaker 1: I'll get it my dang self. Can I get an amen?
37:54
Speaker 1: This is about ownership, agency, own This is about how
38:04
Speaker 1: you feel about yourself. Because we're not human beings. I
38:08
Speaker 1: believe having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having
38:12
Speaker 1: a human experience. Energy matters. Your view of yourself matters.
38:19
Speaker 1: The market brand of you facing the world well, how
38:22
Speaker 1: they see you matters. That's why I'm trying to reset
38:26
Speaker 1: the record. So people, institutions, companies, individuals see you as
38:29
Speaker 1: an asset waiting to be born, not a liability that
38:32
Speaker 1: to be ignored or avoided at all costs. Watch your brand,
38:37
Speaker 1: your personal brand, your family brand, your community brand, watch
38:41
Speaker 1: your brand.
38:42
Speaker 2: Your reputation.
38:45
Speaker 1: I'll always said when I leave a room, and I
38:46
Speaker 1: want anybody to say, but I like that guy, But
38:51
Speaker 1: I respect that guy. But I'd love to do business
38:55
Speaker 1: with John O'Briant. But you never want to butt of
38:59
Speaker 1: any material substance next to your name.
39:03
Speaker 2: You want to end.
39:05
Speaker 1: That's why I'm all about inclusive economics, and that's why
39:10
Speaker 1: inclusive capitalism is important. That's why good capitalism is important.
39:17
Speaker 1: Doing well and doing good. Doing well by doing good,
39:25
Speaker 1: expanding the ownership society is to quote my friend Stephanie rule,
39:29
Speaker 1: like expanding the table and adding a chair doesn't hurt anybody,
39:32
Speaker 1: doesn't take anything from anybody. It grows the table, it
39:36
Speaker 1: grows the economy, It expands our ownership society. We're not
39:44
Speaker 1: tearing down a system. We're making sure everybody has a
39:48
Speaker 1: stake in it, so no one wants to tear it up.
39:52
Speaker 1: People tell me, oh, I hate rich people. No, you
39:55
Speaker 1: don't you hate rich people until you become rich. What
39:58
Speaker 1: you hate is a game system. What you hate is
40:01
Speaker 1: the system that is rigged. No matter how hard you work,
40:03
Speaker 1: you can't get buy or get ahead. People resent that system,
40:08
Speaker 1: and that's what we should want to refine, and we
40:12
Speaker 1: should want to reset. And we have to do that
40:14
Speaker 1: in part by upgrading our own software.
40:17
Speaker 2: So no one has.
40:18
Speaker 1: Even at least a good excuse to leave us out
40:22
Speaker 1: of this party called success.
40:24
Speaker 2: So this is John.
40:25
Speaker 1: O'Brien and this has been Money and Wealth of the
40:30
Speaker 1: Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio platform, season three. I
40:36
Speaker 1: want you to remember something. Understanding money is not just
40:41
Speaker 1: about the numbers. It's about understanding the systems that create opportunity.
40:47
Speaker 1: And once you understand that system, you can learn how
40:51
Speaker 1: to win in it. I want you, all of you, black, white, red, brown,
40:57
Speaker 1: everybody to win that scale.
41:02
Speaker 2: Let's finish Doctor King's und finished work.
41:03
Speaker 1: He was working with poor whites and poor everybody else
41:06
Speaker 1: in the Poor People's Campaign.
41:08
Speaker 2: He said, we're here.
41:09
Speaker 1: I'm here to redeem the soul of America from the
41:11
Speaker 1: triple to evils of war, racism, and poverty.
41:14
Speaker 2: He knew that.
41:16
Speaker 1: If America couldn't be great and sustainable unless everybody had
41:20
Speaker 1: a seat at that table called opportunity. Let's finish that work.
41:23
Speaker 1: Let's on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America
41:30
Speaker 1: recast the software, upgrade our software as an individual, as institutions,
41:34
Speaker 1: and as a nation, to look forward in a way
41:38
Speaker 1: that gives everybody an opportunity to fulfill their God given
41:42
Speaker 1: potential in this system.
41:45
Speaker 2: It's interesting, am bachelor.
41:47
Speaker 1: Andrew Young has a quote he's in that balcony when
41:49
Speaker 1: doctor King was assassinated in sixty eight. He has a quote,
41:51
Speaker 1: my mentor, Andrew Young, our global spokesman in operation, I
41:54
Speaker 1: hope to live in a system of free enterprise, and
41:57
Speaker 1: not to understand the rules of free enterprise be the
42:00
Speaker 1: very definition of slavery. So let's ungame this system. Let's
42:08
Speaker 1: get you the tools to succeed. Coincidence is God's way
42:12
Speaker 1: remaining anonymous. So on a two hundred and fifty the
42:15
Speaker 1: anniversary of America is also the one hundredth anniversary of
42:18
Speaker 1: Black History Month. Thank you, mister Woodson. Yeah, we're sitting
42:26
Speaker 1: in a moment in history. What we're gonna do about it?
42:29
Speaker 1: I'll see you next time. Money and Wealth with John
42:43
Speaker 1: O'Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network.
42:47
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast Network, visit
42:50
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
42:54
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.