10. The Maggie L. Walker Historical Site in Richmond, Virginia
Maggie L. Walker was born in in 1867, the daughter of a former slave according to her own biographical information she provided later in life. Other documentation places her birth as occurring in 1864, when her mother was serving as a cook in the Richmond home of Elizabeth Van Lew. Maggie was a grade school teacher in Richmond when she married a bricklayer by the name of Armistead Walker. Maggie began a lifelong association with the Independent Order of St. Luke, a charity which promoted humanitarian causes as well as care for those unable to care for themselves. In the early 1900s she launched a newspaper on behalf of the organization and shortly after the newspaper began publication she chartered St. Luke Penny Savings Bank.
Maggie was president of the bank, making her the first African-American woman to charter a bank in the United States. When the bank merged with other Richmond banks to form Consolidated Bank and Trust Company she served as the chair of the board of directors for the new bank. Maggie died in 1934, after several years of being confined to a wheelchair, which had led her to be an early advocate in the United States for Americans with disabilities. Her office within the St. Luke Building in Richmond was maintained as it was on the day she died. Her home, in the Jackson Ward area of Richmond is maintained by the National Park Service as a National Historic Site, restored and furnished to appear as it did when she lived there.