Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.
Written by Marlo on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 in Small Business.
For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I thought I would write a quick post about the Civil Rights Movement and its effect on the services afforded to poor urban communities by the financial industry including insurance and banking.
“Redlining” was a process used by financial institutions to exclude investment in particular sections of an urban area. Look at the picture – that is a redlined map of Philadelphia from the 30′s as an example. Overwhelmingly, the excluded investment areas consisted of poorer white, immigrant, and African American neighborhoods. You wanted to build a business, a home, a daycare, or any business in a “redlined” neighborhood chances are that was not going to happen. Not because of your character, credit, or any other reasonable financial reason. Rather, because of a line on a map drawn, most often, because of the color of your neighbors.