Emmett Carroll Burke (5 January 1875–26 December 1953), banker, was born in Richmond, the son of Charles Burke, a laborer, and Martha Burke. He graduated from the Richmond Colored Normal School in 1893, taught briefly, and then became the valet of a local physician. He joined the Grand Fountain United Order of True Reformers, a fraternal insurance order, and when the founder, William Washington Browne, visited Burke's lodge, Browne was so impressed by Burke that he offered him a job as a teller in the order's bank. Burke began his career in banking there on 30 July 1894.

Nine years later, in October 1903, Burke left the True Reformers' Bank to become the cashier of the new Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank. Maggie Lena Mitchell Walker, the Grand Worthy Secretary of the Independent Order of Saint Luke, another fraternal insurance organization, had decided to expand the order's work by creating a bank. Opened on 2 November 1903, the bank was at first an adjunct to the order's various other enterprises, which included a printing shop, a newspaper, and a dry goods store. In addition to his duties with the bank, Burke served as treasurer of the store until its demise in November 1911. Survival for the small bank may have seemed unlikely. Indeed, shortly after his marriage on 29 June 1904 to Amy Blanche Moseley, a teacher, Burke announced his resignation and intention of entering the railroad service, but he soon reversed his decision.

The much larger True Reformers' Bank failed suddenly in 1910, as did another local Black institution, the Nickel Savings Bank. New state regulations adopted in the aftermath of the failures required the separation of the Saint Luke Penny Savings Bank from the Independent Order of Saint Luke. The bank became a private enterprise, owned by stockholders, although its officers remained the same. State banking examiners who visited regularly expressed concern occasionally at Burke's lack of formal training in accounting, but they usually judged the bank well run.

Two new banks owned by African Americans opened in Richmond in 1920, but the Saint Luke Bank and Trust Company (its name starting in 1923) was by far the largest. The vaunted prosperity of the 1920s ended early for Black Richmonders, in that the three banks' resources in 1928 were less than they had been two years earlier. Officers of the banks began discussing a merger. On 2 January 1930 the Saint Luke Bank and Trust Company and the Second Street Savings Bank combined to form the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, and one year later the Commercial Bank and Trust Company merged with the new institution. With the merger, Burke succeeded Walker as president. A newspaper story at the time commented on his parsimonious approach to lending the bank's money. Burke's fiscal conservatism served the bank well during the Great Depression. In 1935 the Federal Housing Administration authorized the bank to make its mortgage loans. Total assets declined during that decade, but the bank survived the hard times.

Burke's own reputation for probity and intelligence bolstered public confidence in the bank. In 1926 he earned a bachelor of laws degree from Virginia Union University, and he served on the school's board of trustees from 1943 until his death. A writer for the Richmond Planet identified Burke in 1934 as one of the ten greatest African Americans in the capital. A white judge named him the following year to a special grand jury investigating two city officials charged with embezzlement, a rare appointment for an African American at that time. More important than personal honors, however, Burke's careful lending policies helped establish the flourishing Black business district in the bank's Jackson Ward neighborhood.

On 17 January 1950, shortly after Burke's seventy-fifth birthday, the board of directors elected him to another year's term as president of the bank, but that spring he fell ill at the bank and required assistance to do his work. Some board members became concerned that his health was failing and requested at the end of May that he step down from active leadership. Stung by the board's proposal that he move to an upstairs office and accept a reduced salary, Burke angrily severed all connections with the bank on 5 June 1950.

Burke had one son who survived him. In retirement he remained active in Ebenezer Baptist Church, which he served as treasurer for forty-one years. Emmett Carroll Burke died in Richmond of complications resulting from arteriosclerosis on 26 December 1953 and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in that city.

Sources Consulted:
Biography in W. P. Burrell and D. E. Johnson, Twenty-Five Years History of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers, 1881–1905 (1909), 363 (portrait), 496–497 (provides birth date); information provided by grandson Emmett M. Burke Jr.; Birth Register, Richmond City (birth date of 28 Jan. 1875 for Emmel Burke, a female), Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; BVS Marriage Register, Richmond City; Richmond Planet, 1 Aug. 1903, 18 June 1904, 2 July 1904, 3, 10 Jan. 1931, 6 July 1935; Richmond Afro-American, 10, 17 June 1950; Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, "Let Us Have A Bank That Will Take The Nickels And Turn Them Into Dollars" [ca. 1991], 4–14 (portraits); bank's fiscal health documented in annual reports of State Corporation Commission's banking section; "Richmond's Greatest Blacks: A 1934 Nomination," Richmond Quarterly 5 (spring 1983): 52; obituaries in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 29 Dec. 1953, Richmond Afro-American, 2 Jan. 1954, and Norfolk Journal and Guide, 9 Jan. 1954.

Photograph in Twenty-Five Years History of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John T. Kneebone.

How to cite this page:
John T. Kneebone, "Emmett Carroll Burke (1875–1953)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Burke_Emmett_Carroll, accessed [today's date]).

Return to the Dictionary of Virginia Biography Search page.