Roddy got start as bank cashier

Bert Roddy, one of the early stockholders in Memphis’ Solvent Savings Bank and Trust Co., became cashier in 1914. The bank was founded in 1906 by Robert R. Church. In 1921 the bank boasted that it was the largest bank in the world owned and operated by black people. A graduate of LeMoyne Normal Institute, Roddy was also the operator of the successful Iroquois Cafe on Beale Street. He later became the first president of the Memphis branch of the NAACP, the founder of the first black- owned grocery chain (Citizens Cooperative Grocery Stores) in the city and an organizer of the Supreme Liberty Life Insurance Co.