Pioneer of first black-owned Miami bank dies
Sonny Wright put focus on economic empowerment.
MIAMI — Sonny Wright’s wife of 50 years, Veronise StrongWright, thinks the secret to her late husband’s business success could be traced, in part, to his father, Lindzey Wr i g h t , a c o n s t r u c t i o n worker in Swainsboro, Ga.
“I think there might be some genes that steered him to where he ended up in real estate,” Strong-Wright surmised.
A c l e a r v i s i o n hel ped, too. “He was a visionary,” she said. “He could envision things to happen and it took place. My son-in-law asked him, ‘Why do you think God was so good to you and allowed you to be successful in whatever you pursued?’
“He said, ‘Listen to me carefully. Most people talk about it. People talk about things. I did it.’ He was a very aggressive person and had the vision, but he made sure he circulated in the right circles that could help him.”
Sonny Wright, who died Dec. 12 at 81 of cancer, made local history when, in 1983, he bought 81 percent of the existing Peoples National Bank of Commerce in Liberty City. This action, undertaken with the help of investors such as Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie and the Rev. Samuel Atchison, made Peoples the first black-owned bank in Miami-Dade County.
Wright also owned the historic Carver Hotel at Northwest Ninth Street and Northwest Third Avenue in Overtown, the newspaper South Florida News Week and Universal Real Estate in Liberty City, which he established. He served on the boards of Florida International Unive r s i t y, Mi a mi B o a rd o f Realtors, Urban League of Greater Miami and Mount Calvary Baptist Church, and he chaired the Florida Real Estate Commission.
Between the bank and real estate firm, Wright had the ear of local politicians and bold-face names including President Bill Clinton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, then-U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill, religious leader Louis Farrakhan, boxing promoter Don King and “Miami Vice” co-star Philip Michael Thomas.
A humiliating experience at a Miami Royal Castle soon after Wright arrived from New York in 1957 inspired him to start his first business — Sonny’s Sportsman’s Luncheonette in Overtown.
In an interview for Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer’s book, “Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1960 Through the 1980s,” Wright recounted how he was inspired to open the Miami eatery.
“When I first came here, I recall going into Royal Castle and I made the mistake of sitting down waiting for a hamburger that I was going to take out because I knew that you couldn’t eat the hamburger there,” he said.
Wright was instructed by a staffer to stand and wait for his food — and then leave with the bagged burger.
“That was really an experience that I think a lot of black people have had at one time in their life. I think that the idea really is not so much the ability to eat at a hamburger place, but I think more importantly, to buy one,” Wright said.
Said daughter Denise Webster: “He said that was so compelling to him. Though h e was e mbar r a s s e d h e couldn’t eat the hamburger, what struck him wasn’t [that] fact ... but that he should be able to own the business that produces the hamburger. That way we could revitalize our own communities. That is where he got his whole premise on creating economic empowerment within the community in Overtown.”
Cobbling savings from a post office job he’d held in New York, work as a laborer, and tapping friendships he’d made with some local businessmen, Wright opened his own small restaurant. Friends like Cassius Clay (later boxing champ Muhammad Ali) and R&B singer Solomon Burke could be found helping out inside in the 1960s, his wife remembered.
Soon, Wright turned his attention to real estate, left the restaurant business, and started his own firm, Universal Real Estate. By the mid1970s, he had more than $5 million in sales, Inc. reported.
Not every venture panned out, however. Wright lost control of Peoples National Bank in 1990 when his holding company couldn’t repay a $3.5 million Miami-Dade County loan. The bank folded nine years later when regulators seized it and sold its assets to Boston Bank of Commerce, another blackowned bank.
Dorothy Jenkins Fields, hi storian and founder of the Black Archives, History and Research Foundation of South Florida, said Wright left a formidable footprint in South Florida.
Wright is also survived by his son John David Wright, daughter Shinekqua Baines and five grandchildren. A viewing will be at 4 p.m. Tuesday at Range Funeral Home, 5727 NW 17th Ave., Miami. Services are at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Antioch Baptist Church, 21311 NW 34th Ave, Miami Gardens, FL 33056.