He Signed His Own Name
on the Record.

The voter registration record is still there. List of Registered Voters, Colored, Chatham County. Williams Lucius E. — No. 1509 — Montgomery — Age 40 — Occupation: Insurance. And then his signature — written in his own hand.

Lucius E. Williams built the Wage Earners Savings Bank into the first Black-owned bank in America to hold one million dollars in deposits. W.E.B. Du Bois held it up as a model of Black economic self-determination. Walter Sanford Scott — who lived at 540 Taylor Street — also worked within this same financial ecosystem.

Two Savannah city directories confirm Williams at addresses on Montgomery Street. The voter registration record confirms his hand. 1509 Montgomery Street is where he lived. That address is now a discount mart.

The Wage Earners Savings Bank building still stands on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. W.W. Law later converted it into the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum. The man who built the bank is not commemorated there. His house has no marker.