Life — January 1, 1885 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "No Faith in the Bank" — Life Magazine, January 1, 1885 This cartoon satirizes African American distrust of banks following the Freedmen's Bank collapse (1874), which devastated Black depositors who lost their savings. The scene shows two Black men in conversation about financial institutions. The dialogue uses period dialect to convey their skepticism: one warns against trusting banks with money, suggesting Sunday school superintendents and "pious folks" who promoted banking have lost confidence in financial institutions themselves. The satire targets the irony that respectable community leaders encouraged Black families to deposit savings in banks that ultimately failed them. The cartoon reflects genuine economic anxiety in Black communities about financial security and institutional reliability during the Reconstruction era's aftermath.