Jesse Binga was born on April 10, 1865, in Detroit, Michigan, United States, the youngest of eight girls and two boys of William W. Binga, a barber, and Adelphia (Powers) Binga. His parents, both of whom were freeborn, came to Detroit in the 1840's where his father eventually became sufficiently prosperous to invest in real estate and housing.
Jesse Binga attended public school in Detroit and completed two years of high school. While in school he learned barbering from his father, and also collected rents and helped maintain his father's properties.
After leaving school, Jesse worked for a young black attorney, and in 1885 he embarked on an eight-year journey as an itinerant barber and transient entrepreneur. He went to Chicago, worked as a barber in Kansas City, Missouri, then stopped in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in Helena and Missoula, Montana, where his uncle owned a restaurant and real estate. In Tacoma, Washington, he opened a barber shop, and moved on to Seattle, where he again set up a shop. He sold out soon after and traveled to Oakland, California, where he was employed as a barber. Then he entered the service of the Southern Pacific Railroad as a porter on the coastal runs. Disillusioned with life on the west coast, he moved to Ogden, Utah, where he worked as a Pullman porter. He invested in land on a former Indian reservation near Pocatello, Idaho, and when he arrived in Chicago shortly before the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, he had accumulated capital from his profitable land dealings.
Binga's subsequent career paralleled the rise and fall of the dream of developing a black metropolis on Chicago's south side. His rise from huckster to businessman for more than twenty years and the ensuing collapse of his financial empire at the start of the depression serve as a parable of black Chicago. In 1898 he opened a real estate office on south State Street. With his clientele drawn from the rapidly growing black community, Binga prospered by seeking rental property throughout the south side, regardless of discriminatory traditions. In 1905 he leased a seven-story building on State Street and opened it to black tenants. In 1908 he opened the Binga Bank in a newly constructed office building next door; it was the first bank owned, managed, directed, or controlled by blacks in the North. With the great migration of blacks to Chicago initiated during World War I, Binga grew successful and rich. At one time he owned 1, 200 apartment leaseholds, and by 1926 he owned more property on State Street south of Twelfth Street than any other person.
In 1921 his bank was chartered by the state, and as the Binga State Bank opened in January 1921, with a capital and surplus of $120, 000. Although the board of directors comprised leading black businessmen, Binga was the major stockholder and it was still considered Binga's bank, under his personal control, the shift from private to state bank notwithstanding. Binga continued to run it as if it were privately owned and under single proprietorship. In the 1920's his realty company expanded, and the capital and surplus of the Binga State Bank increased to $235, 000 in 1924. He organized the Binga Safe Deposit Company and promoted a black insurance company. In 1929 he constructed the Binga Arcade as his banking headquarters and as a central office building in the black belt.
Although not an active civil-rights leader, Binga’s concern for enlarging his business and opening up black opportunity placed him in the center of racial turmoil that followed World War I. Binga's activities brought him into direct confrontation with the traditional color line in Chicago. As the black population expanded, Binga leased apartments and funded mortgages in south side areas previously barred to blacks. White homeowners and renters fought to maintain the restrictions, but Binga was not intimidated by verbal threats or bombs.
In March and November 1919, his real estate office was bombed, and in 1919 and 1920 five attempts were made to bomb his home (three of them successful) despite police guard. Binga pledged to continue representing his clients: "I will not run. The race is at stake and not myself. " What bombs could not do, however, the collapse of the economy did. On July 31, 1930, the state auditor ordered Binga's bank closed because its liabilities exceeded assets by over $500, 000. The major cause of the closing had been the deflation of real estate values on the south side; other contributing factors had been the decline in deposits, the large amount of unsecured loans, and the excessive investment in the bank building and site.
The bank's problems had been evident for more than a year, but Binga would not give up control of the bank to save it; he tried to do so by himself and failed. Eventually almost every neighborhood bank outside the Loop also closed. The failure of the Binga State Bank ended the dream of a black metropolis, and with Binga's loss of his personal fortune, estimated at $400, 000, the savings of thousands of working-class blacks also disappeared. The average deposit at the bank's closing in 1930 was $66. 12; over 80 percent were under $100. 00.
After the bank failure, its practices came under close scrutiny and Binga was indicted for embezzlement. The first trial ended in a hung jury, but in 1933 Binga was convicted of five counts of embezzlement for the issuance of fraudulent loans. After serving three years in jail, he was paroled in 1938 to work as a handyman at St. Anselm's Catholic Church. During his imprisonment, south side leaders had campaigned for a pardon for him. Binga died on June 13, 1950, in St. Luke's Hospital, Chicago, after suffering a stroke and falling down a staircase in his house. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery.
Jesse Binga was a pioneer of black business in the early 20th century. Binga founded the first private bank for African-Americans in 1908, mainly because many banks excluded them. It was also the first bank owned and directed by African-American. Later he obtained a State charter and opened the Binga State Bank in 1921. He also attained around 1200 property leaseholds on south State Street and rent them for blacks, thus he helped open up better quality housing to blacks. His career symbolized the optimism of black business in the 1910's and 1920's. Despite his downfall, his achievements inspired pride, and his life was important to large numbers of black Americans.
Binga married his first wife Frances Scott on April 14, 1885, and they had a son named Bethune D. Binga. During an extended stay in Montana, he had a daughter with Ms. Hattie Smith named Alta Smith-Donnell. On February 20, 1912, Binga married Eudora Johnson, sister of a Chicago gambling lord. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage in March 1933, during his trial. Eudora Binga had inherited her brother's $200, 000 estate and worked actively in charitable and benevolent institutions. They had no children.
