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These examples help explain the distrust people of color often feel toward their employers. But we can also look through the lens of consumers and investors—and, here again, people of color often feel suspicious of White corporate systems. That mistrust is well-earned, rooted in devastating events. Freedman's Savings and Trust Company provides a perfect example.

After slavery ended, the US government determined that former slaves needed to participate fully in workforce activities. They wanted this to go beyond basic food and shelter to include access to financial services as well.

On March 3, 1865, Congress established Freedman's Savings and Trust Company with the purpose of helping Blacks understand and leverage the financial services system. The company also focused on hiring and training Blacks to work there. The rationale for the bank was clear: large numbers of Black men had been on the payroll of the Union Army, and paid labor needs a means to see returns and access capital.

Over the years, Freedman's grew. Deposit amounts were small, generally from $5 to $50, but added up to millions as deposits poured in from thousands of Blacks eager to establish financial services access. During its existence, Freedman's Savings and Trust Company had 37 branches and more than 70,000 depositors and $57 million in deposits (adjusted for inflation).³

Along with a beautiful headquarters in Lafayette Square in Washington, DC, dozens of branches began popping up around the country. Then the problems began. Some were unforeseen, such as the Panic of 1873, which caused yields on government securities to sharply decrease, thus reducing the return. The panic affected the entire economy and can't be laid at the feet of Freedman's.

But the same can't be said for the bank's poor management. Freedman's didn't operate with the same rigorous oversight and risk controls that exist in banking systems today. Questions about the prudence of sinking $200,000 into a building on Lafayette Street went unasked. Then, there was the revelation that a Freedman's board member, a White man named Henry Cooke, was siphoning funds from the bank to his own enterprise. The US Government saw the bank was headed downhill, with all this hard-earned money from former slaves riding shotgun.

Efforts to bring in Frederick Douglass to oversee the bank were too late. A post-reconstruction political environment and poor oversight took its toll. The bank remained operational until 1874. More than 61,000 depositors lost over $3 million. Little was recouped.⁴

The creation of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company in 1865 shows Blacks leveraging their wages to participate in the capital-building structure, as well as their trust in that financial corporate structure. Both their finances and their trust were exploited.

Caitlin Rosenthal is an assistant professor of history at UC Berkeley and the author of Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, which is a history of slaveholders' business practices. Using Freedman's as an example, she talks about the impact of distrust in the workplace between underrepresented people and mainstream cultures:

For Black capitalism to make a difference the capital actually has to be held by Black Americans. They have to be the owners and to be in these positions of power. If you can create a structure where the ownership of the capital and the control over the capital is in the community then I think that that's really powerful.⁵