Perhaps the most unique and impressive session of the National Negro Business League was that held at the invitation of John Wanamaker in his great department store in Philadelphia in 1913. One of the most interesting talks at this meeting was that of Charles Banks of Mound Bayou, Miss. Mr. Banks has been referred to in an earlier chapter. He has often been called the J. Pierpont Morgan of his race. He said in part: "I live in the little town of Mound Bayou, Miss., that was founded by Isaiah T. Montgomery, an ex-slave of Jefferson Davis, the President of the Southern Confederacy. Mr. Montgomery, the ex-slave in question, is present at this meeting. We live in what is called the 'Black Belt of Mississippi' and our plantations embrace some of the richest and most fertile land that can be found in the entire 'Delta.' In some parts of the 'Delta' the Negro population outnumbers the white population in a ratio of five to one. In the town in which I live (Mound Bayou) we outnumber the white population in a ratio of five to nothing. (Laughter and applause.) "Instead of whining and lamenting our lot, and bemoaning the racial prejudice which exists in our section of the country, we are taking advantage of some of the opposition and the tendency to segregate us and we are trying to show, through the leadership of this ex-slave of Jefferson Davis, that it is possible for us to build up a Negro community, a town owned and controlled by Negroes right there under his direct supervision. And as a result, on the Yazoo and Mound Bayou Branch of the Yazoo Central Railroad, we have one of the best-governed and most prosperous towns on the whole line. We have something like thirty to forty thousand acres of land in that rich and fertile country owned and controlled exclusively by Negro men and women. We have there the little town of Mound Bayou, which it is our privilege to represent, and so far as its management or government is concerned, we have control of everything. There we have a Negro Depot Agent, a Negro Express Agent, a Negro Postmaster, a Negro Mayor, a Board of Negro Aldermen and City Councilmen, and every other official of the city administration is a full-fledged Negro. In that town I am the banker, and I pass for a Negro." (Laughter and applause followed this sally, as the speaker is the blackest of full-blooded Africans.)