At the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1968, the first minority-owned bank west of the Mississippi opened in Seattle’s Central District.
It was called Liberty Bank.
The bank itself is long gone. But a building bearing its name now provides affordable housing.
For our series What’s in a Name, KNKX’s Kirsten Kendrick introduces us to a woman whose family made history in Seattle.
A ‘beacon of hope’
Liberty Bank opened on May 31, 1968, less than two months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Then-mayor of Seattle, James d'Orma "Dorm" Braman, and then-Washington Gov. Dan Evans helped cut the ribbon.
Michelle Purnell-Hepburn was just 10 years old at the time. But she remembers the day vividly.
“I had been living with this dream and this vision for a lot of my childhood, and then to see it come to fruition was I was just so proud. I was so proud of my parents,” she said.
Located at the corner of 24th Ave. and Union St. in Seattle’s Central District, Liberty Bank was the first minority-owned bank west of the Mississippi.
Purnell-Hepburn’s, along with eight other community leaders.
It helped Black homeowners and small business owners in the Central District obtain mortgages and loans at a time when mainstream financial institutions used discriminatory redlining practices to lock them out.
“It was just a bank that was for us, by us, created by us, built by us. That's another reason why it was such a beacon of hope for the community,” Purnell-Hepburn said.
‘Streets in Seattle are paved with gold’
The story of Liberty Bank begins with a letter.
It was sent by Purnell-Hepburn’s grandfather, who had moved to Seattle in the 1930s as part of the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South.
He realized there were opportunities in the city for anyone willing to work hard, Purnell-Hepburn said, and he sent a Western Union wire to his son and daughter-in-law telling them “the streets up here are paved with gold.”
“Not saying that there wasn't discrimination or mistreatment,” Purnell-Hepburn said. “However, slavery didn't happen here, and so people were more taken on merit and a willingness to work as compared to just the color of their skin.”
‘Lifting as we climb’
The Purnells moved from Memphis to Seattle in 1941. And they put into practice their family motto of “lifting as we climb” — making sure you’re pulling someone else up with you.
It is a motto Purnell-Hepburn still lives by today in her role as associate dean of inclusion and diversity at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.
That mindset is also shared by her older sister, Carolyn Purnell, an attorney, who was a newlywed when Liberty Bank was being formed and a new mother in its early days.
James Purnell spent his career working for financial equality for people of color.
He founded Sentinel Credit Union in Seattle in 1953, with fellow members of the local branch of the Masonic Prince Hall Grand Lodge for African Americans. But it was limited, as credit unions were back then, to offering only basic financial services, like savings accounts, rather than mortgages and business loans.
Purnell-Hepburn said her father had a bigger dream: “He wanted to take that next step and create a true for-profit financial institution, and that was Liberty Bank in Seattle.”
The naming of Liberty Bank followed the conventions of minority-owned banks east of the Mississippi River that had names like “Freedom National Bank” and “True Reformers Bank.”
But, Purnell-Hepburn said, it took “a good seven years” for the bank to open “because the start of this was even before the Civil Rights Act. And there were many, many, many turndowns before we got a yes.”
Even after it opened, Purnell faced discriminatory actions. State banking regulators would not allow him to be the first president of Liberty Bank.
State regulators required that an institution's leader have formal, mainstream executive banking experience — a credential Purnell did not have. A white co-founder, banking executive Joel Gould, was the bank’s first president. “They were not ready to have a minority-owned institution (also) led by a Black man with his wife on the board,” Purnell-Hepburn said.
Purnell ended up being the bank’s third leader. He later served as president of the National Bankers Association, which represents minority- and women-owned financial institutions. In that role, he was invited to the White House to meet President Jimmy Carter and discuss how the federal government could support minority-owned banks.
Purnell-Hepburn said it was one of her father’s proudest moments. “That was the high point of his life to actually go to the White House, meet the president, and sit down at the cabinet table,” she said. “A little little boy from Memphis, Tennessee – that was high cotton.”
‘Lost the battle, but won the war’
Liberty Bank closed in 1988 due to ongoing financial deficits and uneven profits, five years after Purnell retired.
It was reorganized as Emerald City Bank, which was later acquired by KeyBank.
For many years, the building sat vacant. But community members kept the property safe from vandalism.
Later, there was a push to get the building declared a city landmark. Purnell-Hepburn was asked to speak to the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board.
Michelle Purnell-Hepburn holding onto the original Liberty Bank vault, inside the Liberty Bank Building in Seattle's Central District. Purnell-Hepburn pushed the city to declare the original building a landmark, the city eventually denied the status. Community Roots Housing purchased the property in 2015, with plans to build affordable house while honoring the history of Liberty Bank.
“My niece and I spent time basically writing the history of Liberty Bank as much as we could piece together, through all the notes and what have you, and all the records that we have,” she said. “We made a pitch, and unfortunately, it did not pass.”
Purnell-Hepburn was told that too much had been changed from the original design. She took the news hard.
But representatives from Community Roots Housing (then Capitol Hill Housing) bought the property in 2015. The group wanted to build affordable housing on the site — and keep the name Liberty Bank.
“When I was approached to be on the advisory board and found out they wanted to name the building ‘The Liberty Bank Building,’ I thought to myself, ‘We lost the battle, but maybe we won the war,’” Purnell-Hepburn said.
The Liberty Bank Building
The Liberty Bank Building opened in 2019. It provides 115 affordable apartments on 24th and Union, the same corner where the bank once stood.
They incorporated some of the bank’s safe deposit boxes into the sign out front. Inside, the bank’s vault door hangs in the lobby. The cursive LB logo, designed from Mardine Purnell’s handwriting, is on the lobby wall and on the outside of the building.
There is also shadow box art and a mural on the building’s first floor, honoring each of the bank’s founders. Purnell-Hepburn said it means a lot to have her family’s legacy preserved in this way.
“History was made here on this corner of 24th and Union. And that was my biggest fear — that the history goes away,” she said. “I wanted Seattle to know that history was made here on May 31, 1968.”
Purnell-Hepburn is still the keeper of all the Liberty Bank history. One day, she hopes to hand over all of her newspaper clippings and photos to the Northwest African American Museum, “so they will live on, long after I do.”
