A crucial part of Martin Luther King Jr.’s efforts to improve social and economic conditions for African-Americans in the civil rights movement was housing.
Half a century after his assassination, his vision has not been fully realized. His daughter, activist and Atlanta native Bernice King, is continuing his work through a new digital banking and payment processing company called Ready Life, which will launch on Labor Day.
King is the top advisor for the San Francisco-headquartered startup, founded by former White House aide Ashley Bell. The startup aims to qualify disadvantaged people for mortgages and grow Black-owned small businesses.
“A lot of my father's work was focused on creating a pathway for Blacks in terms of job creation,” King said. “If you fast forward, it really was about affordable housing, because he wanted to challenge our country to open pathways economically for the Black community, because one of the major avenues to create wealth is homeownership.”
Creating generational wealth
Black Americans have a homeownership rate of 46.4%, compared to 75.8% of white families, according to The Brookings Institute. Homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods are valued $48,000 less than predominantly white ones.
Atlanta is not an exception. The median household income for a White family in the city is $83,722 compared to $28,105 for a Black family, according to the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative. Atlanta is also the No. 1 city for income inequality, according to the organization.
Ready Life helps people qualify for a mortgage based on their on-time rental payment history rather than using credit scores or W2 verification. Once generational wealth is built through homeownership, Bell hopes that will spur more entrepreneurship in the Black community.
The company has financial support from Jacobs Asset Management Special Opportunity Ventures. Access to credit through the company can be cheaper than going through traditional banks because it isn't subject to federal interest rate hikes, Bell said.
Prominent Atlanta business figures will serve as advisors to the company including Cortez Bryant, former manager of Lil Wayne and co-CEO of the Blueprint Group record label, and Adam Aspes, general partner at Jacobs Asset Management, LLC.
Atlanta is both a hub for financial technology and the birthplace of the civil rights movement. Other local business and political leaders are using innovations in the financial and banking sectors to build wealth in minority communities.
Now Corp., a financial technology co-founded by Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, allows small businesses receive immediate payments while their clients choose to pay their invoices. Rapper and activist Michael "Killer Mike" Render, Ambassador Andrew Young and TV executive Ryan Glover started Greenwood, a digital banking platform for the Black and Latino communities.
Incorporating cryptocurrency
Ready Life is based on blockchain technology based on Provenance Blockchain Inc., which provides real-time payments without fees.
Other payment processors often charge fees and can take multiple days for money to appear in an account following a transaction, Bell said.
The platform's use of blockchain can lower costs for merchants and retail businesses by 80%, according to the company, which can give women- and minority-owned businesses an advantage by saving money.
Ready Life is embracing cryptocurrency and blockchain in part so that marginalized communities can regain trust in financial institutions, Bell said.
“Blacks and Hispanics are using crypto more because of a fundamental inherent distrust of financial systems,” said Bell. “Go back to the Freedmen's Bureau, the first Black bank, Dubois said that it would have been better for us to have been slaved 10 more years than for the federal government to close the Freedom Bureau and Black former slaves lose 80% of their wealth with the stroke of a pen.”
The platform will also provide educational materials about the risks and opportunities of owning crypto as a way to build wealth.
“We're going to be at the front end of educating minority communities on blockchain and crypto, that's where the economy's going and we don't want our people to be at the back of the line," Bell said. "We want to be at the front."
The cryptocurrency market has hit turmoil in recent weeks.
The price of Bitcoin has dropped more than half the price of its peak in December 2021 in the past six months. Last week, shocks were felt in the crypto market when cryptocurrency bank Celsius announced it was halting withdrawals by its nearly 2 million users. Earlier this month, Crypto exchange company Coinbase said it extended a hiring freeze for both new and existing positions and rescinded some job offers.
A background in social justice
King and Bell have previously worked together to help close the racial wealth gap through Atlanta's National Black Banks Foundation. The nonprofit provides expert legal, regulatory and operational support to Black-owned banks.
In March of this year, Major League Soccer partnered with the organization to pledge a $25 million loan to Black banks. It was the first time any sports league has participated in a major commercial transaction exclusively with Black banks, according to a news release.
King has played a substantial social justice role in the Atlanta community. She is the CEO of The King Center, an organization that teaches the nonviolent principles modeled by her father. The center has enacted initiatives including “Be Love Day,” a virtual session series that addressed issues such as voter suppression and education reform in addition to the Nonviolence365 trainings and The Beloved Community Talks.
Last year, the Atlanta Business Chronicle awarded King the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Lifetime Achievement Award.
