Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company

(Obverse) Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company is the oldest, continuously operated African-American bank in the United States. Formerly known as the One-Cent Savings Bank and Trust Company and organized for the uplift of African Americans, it opened on January 16, 1904. African-American Nashville leaders Richard H. Boyd (president), James C. Napier (cashier-manager), and Preston Taylor (chairman) were among the bank's principal founders and officers. (Reverse) Other founders and officers included C. N. Langston (teller), J. B. Bosley, William Haynes, J.W. Grant, E.B. Jefferson, T. G. Ewing, and J. A. Cullom. As the depository for the Defense Fund of the Afro American Council, the bank helped fund the African-American civil rights movement in 1906. The One-Cent Savings Bank and Trust Company, Nashville's first African-American owned bank, changed its name to Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company in 1920.