‘Minority Owned’ Gateway Bank of St. Louis Goes Out of Business

One of our readers, Ciccio, has been doing a great job of tracking bank closures since Obama took office (118 bank closures under Obama’s watch, so far).  In fact, Ciccio’s dedication to tracking bank closures has motivated me to routinely visit FDIC’s official website for updates.  Today, I was shocked to learn that  the Gateway Bank of St. Louis was listed among the many of Obama’s victims.

Why was I so shocked?  You see, the Gateway Bank of St. Louis was one of those wonderful little success stories in which the black owners had fought long and hard to make something of their lives during the Civil Rights movement of the nineteen-sixties.

A little history is in order here to put things in perspective:   Basically, if you were a black person living in St. Louis during the early 1960′s, you weren’t getting hired by the local banks and,  most certainly, you weren’t getting a loan to buy that dream house you always wanted!  In fact, back in 1963, blacks and civil rights activists in St. Louis began protesting the Jefferson Bank & Trust Co. over its refusal to hire blacks for professional jobs. The demonstrations went on for weeks on end, complete with rallies, vigils, marches, sit-ins, etc., etc.

In other words, during the early 1960′s, prospects for financial advancement via financial institutions in St. Louis were looking pretty slim for blacks.

Along comes George Montgomery and a few other disenfranchised blacks who had this crazy idea of opening a up a bank which would not discriminate based on the color of a man’s skin.  They soon were able to gain the support of the chairman of the board of the First National Bank of St. Louis (which was, of course, white-owned).  That chairman lent his staff and his guidance, and Gateway National Bank opened in 1965, “born of determination, and cooperation between races.”

The St. Louis community was very proud of the Gateway Bank.  It represented an historic turning point during the civil rights movement.

Given its historical significance, you would have thought that Obama would have had no problem kicking in a paltry couple of million dollars (out of the almost 1 trillion dollar Stinkulus Package) to help save the Gateway Bank.    But then, Obama isn’t really about saving; he’s about destroying things so he can rebuild them in his own image.

Gateway Bank seized, then sold
By Jim Gallagher
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Gateway Bank, a tiny, minority-owned bank in north St. Louis, was seized Friday by state bank regulators and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and sold to Central Bank of Kansas City.

Gateway Bank’s single branch, at Union Boulevard near Natural Bridge Road, will reopen today as a branch of Central Bank, according to the FDIC. Gateway’s depositors will automatically become depositors of Central Bank, and customers can continue to use their checks and ATM cards. The deposits remain federally insured.

[...]

Gateway Bank, long the only black-owned bank in St. Louis, had a troubled financial history and was on the FDIC’s list of problem banks since 2006. The bank had $27.7 million in assets and $27.9 million in deposits. The bank reported losses for at least the past four years, including a $1.3 million loss in the first six months of 2009.

[...]

Explore posts in the same categories: Money