John Hope Bryant

Huffington Post ~ On Leadership: Sunburned Black Folks

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

 

This just makes me smile, because it completely neutralizes the backwards theory of and around this crazy thing called race and racism.

While in the Bahamas for an event recently, I noticed that I was actually sunburned. Let me note here, that I am proudly African American. My deepest roots come from mother Africa, so no way I thought, would I ever be sunburned. Black folks are built for the sun. That's true, if I were 100 percent African.

The reality is (thanks to African-Ancestry I know this), just like my friend and mentor Quincy Jones, I am 71 percent Cameroon, but I found that I am also 26 percent European, and the rest is Asian, Indian and 'other.' That means that what I really am, to quote Quincy, is "Global Gumbo." I'm a rich mixture of the broad texture of our world, and in all likelihood, so are you.

Or take our president, the Honorable Barack Obama. In the Black community we refer to him proudly as "Black," when in reality, he is Black African (his father from Kenya), White European (his mother), and was raised in part culturally Hawaiian and Indonesian, and then moved to the South Side of Chicago. So, what and who is President Obama, actually, if not a global reflection of all of us? A man for our times, really. Global Gumbo, thank you Quincy J.

We are all in this together.

Read the complete article on the Huffington Post here.

 

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Solving Poverty: Dr. King, Wealth and Poverty, from Birmingham, Alabama to the Black Mecca of Atlanta

U.S. Surgeon General to Headline HOPE Forum in Atlanta May 17th, 2013

Solving Poverty: Dr. King, Wealth and Poverty, from Birmingham, Alabama to the Black Mecca of Atlanta

This past week marked the 50th anniversary of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Birmingham Movement of 1963.  Much is known about Dr. King's now famous Letter, but it is generally less known that the Birmingham Movement was rooted in economic justice and jobs.  

And so, it was fitting that this week the organization I founded, Operation HOPE, marked the occasion by hosting a special HOPE Forum at our new HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer in Atlanta, featuring U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry. Comptroller Curry regulates national banks with total assets of more than $12 trillion.  

An authentic, thoughtful and caring leader with a direct impact on more than $12 trillion in banking assets, is precisely the sort of transformational leader we need to see more of in inner-city, rural and under-served communities in America. For me, it is all part of a growing movement and body of work, from civil rights justice, to civil rights empowerment for all.  

But the visit to Atlanta and the HOPE Center Ebenezer, located within the larger Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resource Complex, across from the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, was not a celebration of the vast economic progress that has been made since Dr. King's Letter From A Birmingham Jail. There has been progress, no doubt. Quite a bit in fact, but grossly uneven in its impact; even amongst African-Americans.  A room full of Black prosperity is to be celebrated, but it not absent the reality of Black poverty and the unbanked which could be found less than 2 blocks away.

Frankly, much of what Dr. King attempted to deal with and address through his Birmingham Movement work, could very well be applied to the economic conditions today in both Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia.

50th Anniversary of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013, not only is the date for the HOPE Forum discussion on the future of silver rights empowerment for all, at Dr. King and Daddy King's historic church, and the HOPE Financial Dignity Center Ebenezer now attached to it, it is also the very important 50th anniversary of Dr. King's famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

It is therefore very appropriate that one key Operation HOPE board member in the Southeast, Reverend Dr. Bernice A. King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., heads back to Birmingham, Alabama on this important day, in honor of her father's work and legacy.  We encourage all men and women of good will to join her there in Birmingham, Alabama.

And a friend of that movement, Operation HOPE, also stays behind in Dr. King's homebase of Atlanta, Georgia, hosting the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry (regulating more than $12 trillion in banking assets across the nation), in a continuing discussion around silver rights empowermernt for all, and how we advance entrepreneurship, ownership, opportunity and capital flow into the very low-wealth communities that Dr. King and his aide Andrew Young (now Ambassador Andrew Young), were so very concerned about.  

Support one anniversary event or the other, but in no case, should we decide to do nothing.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail was for me, arguably the best and important of Dr. King's writings.  Possibly even more powerful than his better known I Have A Dream speech in Washington, D.C.  That said, the work continues.  The work to empower and uplift the least of these God's children, even continues on the 50th anniversary of this great work, and Dr. King's great sacrifice.

Let's go.

 

John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), the only African-American bestselling business author in America, and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama.  Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S. He is also a co-founder of Global Dignity with HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum.  Mr. Bryant is a thought leader represented by the Bright Sight Group for public speaking. Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE: ACRE), a specialty finance company that is managed by an affiliate of Ares Management LLC, a global alternative asset manager with approximately $59 billion in committed capital under management as of December 31, 2012. 

 

 

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From the Video Archives: John Hope Bryant Speaks at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Men's Day, 2009

Ebenezer Baptist Church Men's Day from operationhopedotorg on Vimeo.

 

 

Operation HOPE: U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, Thomas Curry Joins Ambassador Andrew Young for a Discussion on the Future of Banking America, in Atlanta, Georgia

HOPE Center to host a HOPE Forum on April 16th

 

ATLANTA – March 20, 2013 – Financial empowerment nonprofit Operation HOPE today announced that Thomas Curry, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, will join HOPE Global Spokesman and Civil Rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young in Atlanta, to discuss America on Reset: The Future of Banking and What Comes Next for You, at the Operation HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer (HOPE Center) on Tuesday, April 16.   

Curry and Ambassador Young will lead a dynamic forum around the important role the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency plays to ensure that America’s Federal Banking System remains safe and sound.  Attendees will also have the opportunity to ask questions of U.S. Comptroller Curry.

 

This event follows the February forum where FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg provided remarks and had a dialogue with the Mary Beth Walker, Dean Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. This open event will become the second HOPE Forum for the center this year.

Operation HOPE, Atlanta and HOPE Forum Hosts FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg

Operation HOPE Hosts CFPB Director Richard Cordray and CFPB Team in Atlanta, Georgia

Operation HOPE and the HOPE Team at the HOPE Financial Dignity Center Ebenezer, Atlanta were honored and pleased to recently provide an intimate tour of the new HOPE Center Ebenezer, along with the new Martin Luther King, Sr Community Center, dedicated to Daddy King, to CFPB Director Richard Cordray and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Director Cordray and the CFPB team were in Atlanta for a public hearing.  Operation HOPE was pleased to play a co-convening role for a roundtable on mortgage reform.

My sense of Director Cordray is that he is a good man genuinely trying to make a difference.

An Invitation to Leaders: Operation HOPE and HOPE Forums to Host FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg at the HOPE Financial Dignity Center Ebenezer, Atlanta, Georgia

For information on how you might be able to participate, contact HOPE Forums Deputy Director Jodi Brockington.

Solving Poverty: Dr. King's Dream and Silver Rights Not Such a New Idea

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

Solving Poverty: Dr. King's Dream and Silver Rights Not Such a New Idea

As we reflect this year on the 84th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the 50th anniversary of the "I Have A Dream" speech, I think about the vast unfinished agenda of Dr. King, launched as the third phase of his vision for a world better. Dr. King had focused first on social justice, then on ending war, and his last and final work was focused on poverty.

His Poor People's Campaign, originally inspired by Mrs. Marian Wright Edelman, now founder of the Children's Defense Fund, focused on eradicating poverty through a radical movement of a government sponsored living wage for all, and on some level the redistribution of the wealth by the top 3 percent. And given his background as a liberal, lettered man of the cloth, Dr. King's approach to poverty eradication made total and complete sense to him, and at that time.

The government had much to say and do with respect to the issues of justice and freedom for blacks, the poor and the underserved in 20th-century America. Further, Dr. King was not a banker or an investor, nor businessman, as his dad was. Dr. King was a man of the cloth, total and complete, and he executed on his vision from God as he saw it, almost perfectly. He did what he was supposed to do, and expected us to do the rest.

Sadly, Dr. King's life and life mission was cut short and he did not get the chance to participate in even the first march of the Poor People's Campaign. He gave his last speech, and led his last march in support of garbage workers in Memphis, Tennessee, fighting for a living wage, and dignity, for them. Looking forward, it could be said that Black America along with the rest of us have had our Biblical "lost in the wilderness period," over the last 40-plus years since his death, all was not lost.

Today, Mrs. Marian Wright Edelman's niece, Ms. Deborah Wright, is CEO of Carver Federal Bank, the largest black bank in America today, with close to $1 billion in assets

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