Word: banke
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Unity finally capitalized last year at $1.2 million and was the first bank in New England to sell its stock to the general public. Many of the $10 shares were sold in $50 blocks to people who had never conceived of owning stock in anything. Roy G. Guittar, executive vice president and the bank's only white employee, said that 70 to 80 percent of the 3,358 shares are owned by residents of the predominantly black Roxbury-Dorchester community. According to Guittar, there is no controlling interest in the bank and the 22-man, unpaid, board of directors...
Unity became the first state chartered bank to over capitalize prior to opening for business and now, in a mere 90 business days of existence, it is on the verge of making a profit, a feat that, according to Sneed, usually takes a commercial bank three to five years. Since the stockholders are chiefly citizens of Roxbury and Dorchester, Unity's success will profit the entire community...
Sneed, a tall, dark brown pillar of a man, works out of a seven-by-seven foot office allotted for the president. He is involved--unlike most bank presidents--in the day-to-day business of the bank and spends almost half his time assisting individual customers in the bank's main room. "We give really human service here and know our customers by name, not number," he boasted in a recent interview. But Unity is probably one of the only banks in the country where all customers have access to the executives at almost any time...
...budding black enterprise at a time when the need for black entrepreneurship is much publicized by urban politicians and ghetto leaders, it would seem that Unity faces a dilemma. The bank must be concerned with extending new loan oportunities to people who may not have upheld their commitments in the past and must be concerned with its own success as a financial endeavor. Sneed and Fulp see this problem differently. "There are factions of both the black and white community that are watching to see whether we are going to pass the supreme test of survival," Sneed said. But Fulp...
...handicap that we need not have to deal with. Even though we see this in print and know it to be a fact," he said, referring to the pressure on black institutions to succeed, "it must be treated as an irrelevancy. In order for people at this bank to be free to perform, they must be mentally free. This compex can't be allowed to immobilize us. Every time someone comes in here I can't think "We mustn't take this risk because we are a new black bank...