Future of Ownership & Economic Power in America with Dr. Bernice A. King, Ashley Bell, Dhani Jones

What up, Detroit!

I want to paint a quick picture. 2020, like most people in the world, was a very challenging time. I sat on my couch and I scrolled through Instagram and I felt and I heard and I understood that the world was shutting down. Matter of fact, I don't know if anybody got that Instagram post talking about, oh, the gas stations were going to be closed, the grocery stores were going to be closed. So I went to the grocery store and I just went in there with a cart and I just put everything in the basket. It was probably one of the most panicked moments in my life.

And so when the world shut down, what I realized was that our economy as well was going to shut down. What solution might be put forth in order to make sure that we all essentially survived? So like most business owners and people, we looked to see what the future might hold, and they came out with this amazing PPP lending program.

I made a phone call for a couple of my businesses because I thought I had the right relationships in place. And when I submitted my forms for my first company, I got rejected. I submitted my form for the company again. That business got rejected, and I started thinking to myself, how strong really is that relationship? I thought to myself, what will my kids think about this business that seemingly was supposed to be successful to take care of their legacy, and where would it be in the future?

But seeing as I went to the great University of Michigan, we always come up with a solution. So I made a phone call to a friend of mine, Lauren McCann, who worked at Stand Together, and I said, "Hey, Lauren, do we know anybody within the community that knows anything about this PPP lending program?" She was like, "Hold on real quick. I can make a couple calls." So she called her friend Ashley Bell, who she met through the Aspen Institute, that actually was the one that I found out drafted the PPP lending program.

And so I called Ashley, right? And I talked to him on the phone. I said, Ashley, my companies got rejected. If my companies got rejected, I know that your companies got rejected and your companies got rejected. And the relationships that we thought that we had were not relationships at all. They were just minor inconveniences.

And so Ashley and I had a chat. I said, Ashley, I need you to find all these companies. I need you to find a way for us to figure this out. So I called my Michigan family. I had a friend who owned a bank. He said, Dani, if you have a lot of companies, including your own, we will open up a portal and we will help you move companies through their PPP lending program. A hundred million of PPP lending later, my company survived and so many of those other companies that Ashley Bell also knew survived.

And so Ashley and I sat back and we said, you know what? If this person has a bank and they were able to help these people with their relationships, maybe we too should buy a bank. Because that's what Michigan graduates do.

[laughter]

And alas, we stand here today to talk about the value of that moment and the transformational and the transformative legacy that both Ashley and I want, and what we were able to create through that bank. And the transformational legacy of which Dr. Martin Luther King has left on us, so that we can continue to inspire those to take challenging moments in life and bring our communities together so that we can all be successful.

And so in our conversation today, I'd like to first introduce to you my friend and business partner, Ashley Bell.

[applause]

I got to do the next introduction. That's right. Dani has meant so much to me and a lot of people in this room. So I would be remiss if I didn't first say that. I appreciate you exposing me to things that I didn't know. I didn't know what Summit was two years ago till I met Dani.

And on this journey that I've been on of expanding the beloved community, this new generation of allyship, I've been on a journey. And many of you in this room I've met in some fantastic and amazing places over this two-year run, because I believe in the next woman that I'm bringing out tonight to come on the stage with us.

She's striking up the band again, just like her father did here in Detroit in that summer of '63. Summer of '63 was a year that changed American history. It wasn't done by one race of people or one group of people. It was done by the greatest coalition of friends that this country had ever seen. People who invested in each other, who believed that they would travel to places far and wide — from Selma, Alabama to Detroit to Chicago — to marches and sit-ins across a nation to compel a country to do better, to live up to its creed.

And here we are, this next generation, back in Detroit, back in an arena very similar to the arena that he gave the precursor to the "I Have a Dream" speech in June of '63. But this time, a woman is the King.

I want to welcome to the stage the CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolence, of Be Love, Inc., the inheritor of a legacy that changed the world and broke the back of Jim Crow. Ladies and gentlemen, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., Bernice A. King.

[applause]

Dr. King, how does it feel to be in Detroit this month, in June, on this stage together with all of us here at Summit?

It feels really powerful to be here, 62 years almost to the date of my father being here. And you know, his work was about not just making the world a better place, but making us better people. Because we can do some things and it can improve the world, but we got to improve too. And so I'm excited to be here with everybody in this room. We're taking the journey to make this world all it can be for everybody to come into their full potential, so that they can be the best people they can be, too.

When I was growing up, my mom used to tell us, you don't have to be my dad, your dad. You don't have to be me. But whatever you do in this world, be your best self. And so I'm glad to be here. Just the irony of it all and what we're really trying to do as a community in impacting this world, because that's what it's about. I wear these jackets that say "impact over fame." I come from a famous family, but it's not about the fame. It's about the impact on people's lives and on our world.

And the irony of it all is because the fact that the "I Have a Dream" speech was first here in Detroit. Right, in Detroit. Well, I would say it was actually in North or South Carolina, but the first large audience was right here in Detroit, where he was kind of teasing it a little bit. 125,000 people. Yes. It was teased towards — yes. And then moved to 250,000 in DC.

But the thing that was interesting, you know, I read through again the "I Have a Dream" speech just in preparation of today, and you and your family were mentioned. Yeah, my siblings. Your siblings were all mentioned in the speech. And you know, if you read: "I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream."

So when you hear those words from your father and know that he was thinking about you, how close or how far away do you think we are from that dream?

That's an interesting question. Because to me it's a matter of an awakening, you know, to the dignity of every human being in this world. And sometimes we're right there on the precipice, and then other times we're just kind of standing still. So I think we've made some progress. Obviously, we're here in Detroit, and if I just can be frank with you, we — an all-Black audience here is majority white. That says something. Our world has moved, but we haven't moved enough, and especially now with the climate and things that have taken place to push things out of the way in terms of progress we made.

And you know, it's really not about the DEI. It's really about understanding the value of people and understanding the narrative and wanting the best. Going back to that same word. And when you're honest about the disparities that exist in this world and you really analyze it, look at it, consider the data, we got a lot of work to do to overcome the gaps. So we got to figure it out, because it's going to be a point of tension forever if we don't figure it out. As Daddy said, if we don't learn to live together as brothers — and he meant sisters, too — then we're going to be forced to perish together as fools. So we're a long way off.

But let me straighten one thing out. He was not talking about a colorblind world. He didn't want you to dismiss who I am and my culture and what all that represented. He just didn't want that being used in a negative way. So even as we move forward, we're still going to recognize the various cultures and races, but then we're not using that as a measuring point — something negative to use against you, or even something positive — but just a recognition and a respect for that. So yeah, we still have a lot of work to do.

Well, someone that's doing a lot of work is Ashley Bell, and he's been doing that work for a long time. Ashley, as you think about your own family's history and its legacy, I'd be curious how you see that word and how you remember Dr. King and what he told you when you first read the "I Have a Dream" speech.

You know, Dani, I give you credit. Parts of all of our family's history can be traumatic, and sometimes we don't even talk about it. And you've encouraged me to tell more of my family story because of that, and that's actually been freeing for me, especially in our journey of creating this bank.

For those you know, when you talk about African-American-owned banks in America — the night that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, there were 146 Black-owned banks in America. Today, there's 18. We live in a world where these banks are disappearing, and so the opportunity with them.

And with my own family that was from Georgia — in 1934, my family started a Black-owned bank in South Georgia for the sole purpose of giving loans to former slaves to buy back the plantations that they were slaves on, to try out this great American experiment of free markets.

And I say this because I think it's important when we talk about this capitalism idea — that the journey for Black Americans, what the height of what Dr. King was saying in the '60s, was speaking of this journey of going from being capital. Meaning that the people on this stage have ancestors that were put on somebody's tax forms over 100 years ago — meaning they were assets. Men and women listed on schedules, on tax returns. Women in particular, as they got older, were a depreciating asset. Think of that. You could look at someone's taxes and see a woman who was 60 years old being taxed less than an ox in the field.

And you end slavery, and you tell those people that were capital that now it's time for you to become capitalists. With what? Up against all things.

So my family created a bank in 1936 to make sure that we could finance those same sharecroppers to own the land. And they did, and that worked until the 1970s. I wasn't around in that time, but what I did know is the story that our bank was doing fine, but the government put pressure on all these Black banks in America because they didn't want to see what was happening.

People, we believe in a world — in a room full of great people — that everybody's good. Well, some people just aren't. And institutions are just people. And so they forced our bank to be sold at auction on the courthouse steps in Dooly County, Georgia, on the exact same courthouse steps that my great-great-grandfather Mitchell was bought. And our bank was bought up in a rollup that became PNC Bank.

And so here we are, all these years later, looking for redemption. And that's the bank that we created.

It took Ashley about a year and a half to tell me that story. A year and a half. And him and I had done our work through COVID, and I never even knew about that. And so when I think about meeting people and how much history is behind those eyes, and how much legacy is behind the past, we always have to be mindful of that because we may not necessarily know where people are essentially coming from and the weight that might be carried.

And I'd imagine throughout your life, you had always actually been thinking about that. You had always been remembering that moment. I know that you're an avid reader, an avid storyteller, an intellectual if you will. And how, through your life, have you processed that moment — that when you were told about that bank being sold on the same steps that your family member was sold?

You know, you bury it and you use it for fire in this furnace that's inside. I've always known that, because I'm fortunate. I'm a Black man that grew up in America that had the same Black man in my house from the day I was born, still to this day. So I'm fortunate. I know that I had a strong presence.

But I also know that by having parents that lived through Jim Crow — my mom and dad went to HBCU because they didn't think it was cool. It was the only thing legal for them to do. They went to Fort Valley State University, and my mother was valedictorian at Fort Valley State University when her father gave the graduation speech.

We come from an area in the deep South where this was just a part of life. Growing up in Atlanta, that's the cradle of the civil rights movement for a reason. The essence of justice and pursuing a better world is in the DNA of just about everybody who wakes up every day wanting to make this world better.

So how I channeled it, Dani, to be honest with you, is to never give up, to always be hopeful. And that's what made me walk out the doors of being a partner at the largest law firm in the world to join with Dr. King to create enterprises to make this world better. It was worth it.

And so the cradle of civil rights moved and inspired and allowed you to continue your efforts towards growth, and you used that to propel you. Dr. King, how did you use or how did you think about the weight of carrying the King name? And how did you think about your life's impact and how your father, looking down upon you every day, might be moved by the things that you do?

So honestly, I was trying to run away from all of this. I spent probably 20 years — once I became legal, because when you're in your mom's house, you have to do what your parents say. So the weight — it wasn't as challenging because of that. I was tired of people having these expectations of me. You know, for some reason, when a King shows up — meaning one of us — it's like people are still longing for Dr. King. I'm like, I'm Bernice.

So I spent time trying to discover Bernice first and foremost. So that now the weight is not as heavy. Doesn't mean it's not difficult, challenging. But the beauty is, I had a mom — and I always talk about her because my dad gets so much accolades, but the reality is it was my mom who prepared this pathway for the iconic King, because he was not an icon when he was assassinated. They had done a whole study that indicated he was one of the most hated persons in America shortly before he was assassinated. And now you fast forward to 2025, he's one of the most beloved persons in the world.

And some people would argue it's because he's not with us, and so his presence is not threatening today. But I would argue it's because Coretta Scott King, who was side by side with him in the movement, who was an activist herself before they met, who was his equal, who really was probably his number one advisor, is the reason. She dedicated her whole life to creating the institution that I lead, the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, known as the King Center. And then moving towards the holiday.

But in the house, she invoked him a lot. So I had to wrestle with all this. Who is this man? Because I was five when he was assassinated. I didn't get a chance to really know him. So I had to learn Martin Luther King first before I really knew Daddy. And she invoked him so much.

But one of the things that stuck with me through time is she would say to us, somebody has to cut off the chain of violence. And so when I think about the work of my father, his greatest gift to us is this whole nonviolent philosophy and methodology that extends past social justice movement. He really taught it, embodied it as a way of life. He wasn't just doing that in the streets. It's how he engaged people just day-to-day in the work that he did. He had this whole way of thinking and speaking and engaging that came from a higher place of consciousness, or as he would say in the "I Have a Dream" speech: as they went forward in the movement, forever conduct your struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.

So he operated from this high plane of dignity and discipline in everything he did. He didn't want to see people destroyed just because they were destroying. So that's what my mother said — you got to disrupt that.

And I think we're in a time now where we got to be disruptors of the chain of violence that's occurring, not just physically. We're doing things with our tongues. We're creating things sometimes that we're not thinking about its damaging effect. And we can do things in this world that everybody has an opportunity to be their absolute best. And I think Dr. King taught us that way.

So for me, it really is thinking along those lines, carrying that legacy forward, being that disruptor of the chain of violence. And you know, it's violent when people can't have an opportunity to own a home and they're locked out — like in Atlanta. I was talking to somebody earlier about the difference here and in Atlanta. A lot of corporations have bought up the homes in Atlanta, and so the rent is jacked up and there's not as many homes available. So now we have to create all of this, and it never should have happened, because people should have been in the frame of reference of saying, okay, how do we balance this thing out? As Ashley, you said it so well: you can do well and still do good.

We can legislate the same way, and we must do business that way, because we got to disrupt this chain of violence that continues to spiral down and create pain and suffering unnecessarily for so many people.

They always say that behind every great man is an even better woman. And I would turn that around and say beside. Beside every great man. We still got your back though.

[laughter]

And the fact that they lived together — for so long they didn't live in isolation. Right. And when we think about legacy, oftentimes it's not really brought to the front, it's oftentimes sort of put to the side. But now as we move forward through our collective and our community, through collaboration, it's an important piece to that puzzle, because that word means so much.

Ashley, you live in Atlanta. I was listening to Dr. King and her challenge towards the city and its issues. I know you've worked quite a bit within the city. How have some of your efforts moved forward and changed the dynamic of Atlanta so that you could be at the forefront in order to bring us together alongside your journey?

And this part is very — I learned a lot from Dr. King's life, like a lot of us. And to really answer your earlier question, one of his most powerful quotes for me is: "Hate is too heavy a burden to bear. I choose love." And choosing love every day and in every way — it is a discipline.

And the one thing about Atlanta — the city's motto now is "Atlanta Influences Everything" — but the reality is that some of the greatest stories that you heard about how Dr. King systematically broke down this era of Jim Crow, very few of those stories are in Atlanta. He left. It was this blueprint of leave Atlanta, go to Albany, go to Selma, Montgomery, all these other places. Now, Atlanta had its own issues, but the fight was always very strategic.

And so when we think about what's strategic, it takes having allies. When I think of the work that's been the most impactful for me in my life, it is friendship. I wouldn't be on this stage if it wasn't for Dani. You accepted me as a friend. The baseline of my relationship with Dr. King is a friendship. You can't have friendship without trust and love.

When you walk out on faith and you try to do something that's never been done before, the world will teach you first why it's never been done before. And you will answer that question with: the reason it's never been done before is because the wrong people were trying to do it. So we've been on this journey to find the right people, which is why we come to places like Summit.

I know that in this crowd is the next generation of the exact same people that were sitting here in 1963 listening to her father speak. You showed up just like they showed up, because you wanted to hear about how can we make this world better. What is the future of humanity? What can love really accomplish? And you're seeing it. Walls are being broken down. Barriers are being removed only through the power of love.

Dr. King's strategy was that nonviolence was the only way, because at the end of the day, it was the hate that people felt in their heart that was a burden on them that they couldn't carry, that they had to give up. And so when you talk about nonviolence — whether it's in the financial sector, or through climate, or through affordable housing — that is actual violence, as Dr. King said. That is institutional hatred that we have allowed to exist far too long.

How do you change that? Institutionalizing love. And what are institutions? People. You have to carry that with you when you leave here today, back to the boardrooms, back to the places you came from, and bring that Kingian worldview and love to every place you go with that discipline.

So if people are institutions and they need to adjust their aperture towards love, what is different about the human element in 2025?

Well, we are still too segregated. All the right people exist to fix every problem we have. The question is, can we get all the right people in the right place with the right mindset? Dr. King traveled from Atlanta to join you today because she believes some of those people are in this room.

There's a movement that is happening in this country to push back on everything that is erasing the gains that her father gave his life for. And we can't see a resurgence of love and opportunity for everybody unless we are willing to do what her father and his friends did on the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They locked arms.

We offer you that same invitation to join us on that bridge, to know that on the other side might not be the best of circumstances, but together — with friendship based on love and trust — it can be overcome. We are worthy of this moment. Every one of us is a descendant of a legacy that we wouldn't be here if somebody hadn't sacrificed for us. Those pictures of the 1960s should not just be historical relics. They should be inspirations that you need to be in the next photo. Let history capture you in this moment, doing exactly what they did: loving and leading with light and being willing to sacrifice just enough to pay the price for freedom.

[applause]

I got to say something, because what he just said is so important to the way forward. Those people made a decision in a moment, starting in 1955 in Montgomery, when they did the bus boycott. They had to decide, are we willing to make whatever sacrifice that we need to make to see this through, to break the very backbone of bus segregation? And so in that moment, it wasn't just about them. And so they made that sacrifice.

And when I look at the years in between then and now, I don't see that same thing. And I think that's why we keep going around in a circle, because everyone is kind of just trying to hold their own. And it's when we really let go and we trust that the God of the universe is with us — that's one of the principles of nonviolence — when we let go and have trust in that, it gives us what we need to trust each other.

And for my dad, it was about being with the people. When we talk about Martin Luther King, I never talk about him in isolation. There were hundreds of people who made just the same sacrifice that he did. He was able to develop a trust in them for his leadership because he said, we're in this together. He was well-educated. He could have been doing anything else. He came from a middle-class family. But he said, no, we're impacted, even if not everybody directly. As he said, we're caught in this inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. And what affects one directly affects all indirectly. When we understand that and we live that, we can build the kind of community we need, because nothing great happens in isolation.

You got to connect. And he was a great connector. When they wrote that letter from the Birmingham Jail, he was in isolation, being accused of being an outside agitator. And he had to say, look, I can't be an outside agitator anywhere. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And how dare we let their sacrifice be for naught. What's happening right now is almost like a slap in their face. So it's time for us to sacrifice in this generation.

Innovation comes not from one, but it comes from many. It comes from the collaboration of those that are willing to work together.

Dr. King, I didn't realize that you were on the phone too during that PPP call. What got you thinking, maybe I should hang out with these two fellows?

Well, let me set the stage. The world was on fire. We created the Paycheck Protection Program to save a generation of entrepreneurs, but the problem was women and minority-owned entrepreneurs did not have access to banks willing to give them the money they were entitled to get.

And so at the time, I was working in the White House. And there was a strange law that because I was at the White House, we could technically call everybody's phone as a national emergency. So we called every entrepreneur that was a woman and African-American in the entire region. People were literally walking in the grocery store and their phone would ring and it would be like, "Hey, this is T.I., the King of the South. You need to get on this PPP call."

[laughter]

And literally the call started with about 5,000 people, and at the apex we were at 160,000 people on this massive phone call. It lasted four hours. Nobody wanted to get off the phone because it was the one positive place they could find for hope.

And at the end, Dr. King apparently was listening. She texted me May 20th, 2020, at 8:05 PM. "Great call. My dad would be proud." And my response was, "I know your burden is heavy. If I can do anything to help carry a little bit of that, to make this world better, I'll do my best." Here we are, five years later, looking for people to help carry this load.

I think it's a continuation of a phase that my dad was in. Most people think about "I Have a Dream" and race relations, but Dr. King was doing a lot of work on the economic front too. He was holding corporations accountable, requiring businesses invest in Black banks, creating housing opportunities. And so when Ashley came to me, I said, I want to be a part of it, because it's continuing my dad's work.

I had some roots with a bank too. Citizens Trust Bank in Atlanta — my grandfather was part of the initial board. And my father talked the night before he was assassinated about having a bank and telling the Black community, take your money out of these banks and put them in these banks.

Even now, there's nobody in this room that doesn't have a bank. But do you know if the bank you're banking with is aligned with your values? You can go to the Department of Justice website and see that most of those banks have been fined for not loaning money to women and minorities.

We renamed this bank Redemption. This bank actually starts 12:01 AM Tuesday. We're the first Black people in America to ever buy a white bank. We bought it in Salt Lake City. We're going to grow it to be one of the most sound Black banks in America.

[applause]

Imagine a world where you had a credit card that could tell you, every place you shopped, how it was impacting the world, and the interest rate would adjust based on your values. This is the power of capitalism done right.

The Aspen Institute is partnering with the King Center to create a new fellowship. For the first time, Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King fellows at Aspen. Imagine every year, the best entrepreneurs, policymakers, teachers from around the world, studying through a Kingian worldview, creating new ventures to make the world better, funded by venture capital.

Dr. King, what would you leave us with when we think about legacy?

I'm on a journey to disprove something my father said. He said one of the tragedies of human history is that the children of darkness are often more zealous and determined than the children of light. And I think the key is to really think about what is that group project that needs to take place now, that lives past a moment, that lives forward as light in our world.

He left us with a challenge: the nettlesome task is to organize our strengths into compelling power so that these structures and systems cannot deny us our humanity. Let us turn the tide so that the children of light are always more zealous and determined than the children of darkness. Because they have connected. And they have worked towards that beloved community.

[applause]