Are black-owned banks still necessary? Yes, says Justin Garrett Moore, another volunteer organizer behind Bank Black USA and executive director of the New York City Public Design Commission. (He’s also a Next City Vanguard.) Moore grew up in Indianapolis, in the historically black neighborhood of Mapleton-Fall Creek. His parents still live in the area, but the neighborhood is changing. The elementary school he attended, nearly all black when he was a student, was converted into a charter school and is now nearly all white students, he says. His middle school was also converted into a high school, serving a different population, over the objections of residents worried it would exclusively cater to wealthier and whiter populations, as reported in Chalkbeat.
