Black History is every day

Berkshire Bank Highlights + Historical Links & Reference

Berkshire Bank is a promoter of driving equity within the business community. Each February our nation honors and celebrates Black History Month, but Black History Month is not just a one-month event, it should be a focus of our attention every day.

Black Entrepreneurs in the Berkshire Bank Family

• Maurice Peterson & SevenSalon.Spa
• Phillip Woolfolk & Main Street Advisory, LLC.
• Charlie Sexton & Edible Arrangements
• Jonil Casado: Flavors of Your Palate
• Collin Knight | Live Like a Local Tours Boston

Readings, References, & Resources

• Conversation on Racial Wealth Gap per CSpan (2009)
• How A Black Businessman Helped Save William Lloyd Garrison’s Newspaper
• Black Entrepreneurship in America
• Black Entrepreneurship via Fast Company
• Mapping Inequality in New Deal America
• Freedmen & Southern Society Project: Black History Month
• “How Redlining Segregated Chicago, and America”
• A ‘Forgotten History’ Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America’
• The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood: History of Redlining
• History About Black Codes
• Black History Month: Black Banking
• Interactive Redlining Map Zooms In On America’s History Of Discrimination
• Twenty-nine percent of all Black-owned businesses with paid employees are in the health care and social assistance professions, which includes independent practices of physicians, as well as continuing care/assisted living and youth services. #blackhistoryeveryday
• “In the previous five years, 46% of white-owned businesses with employees accessed credit from a bank, and 6% accessed credit from a credit union. During that same time, just 23% of Black-owned employer firms accessed credit from a bank, and 8% from a credit union and 32% of Latino-owned employer firms accessed credit from a bank, and 4% from a credit union.6 These disparities put them at a distinct disadvantage when accessing PPP funds through banks.”

#blackhistoryeveryday