G A L L E R Y Y U H S E L F
Charles Petioni was a co-founder of the Trinidad Co-operative Bank, popularly known as the Penny Bank.In 1914, Petioni and friends raised the capital to finance the establishment of the bank which allowed deposits as small as a penny. He served as its secretary-treasurer.The move was in response to the policy at the British Colonial Bank (BCB), then the only commercial financial institution in Trinidad, which made the opening minimum deposit unaffordable by low-income people.
The BCB, by its policy, catered to upper-class merchants, plantation operators, and government officials.Petioni, however, was not able to see the Penny Bank overcome the resistance it faced from elements in colonial Trinidad that did not want a black-owned bank to succeed. His social activism against colonialism forced him to go into exile in the United States within four years.Petrioni had been a journalist and subeditor with local newspapers from 1908 to 1918.His anti-colonial newspaper articles got him in such trouble that he was fired.
It is reported that “the colonial government sent word to him that his outspoken views about local political and economic conditions had permanently future career opportunities for himself and his family”.When Petioni moved to Harlem, New York, in 1918, he had “never lifted anything heavier than a pen”, and had to take work as a stockman in the shipyards, then as an elevator operator, and later as an elevator operator. Eventually, he attended pre-med night classes at City College of New York until he was able to enroll at Howard University College of Medicine.After graduation in 1925, Petioni became one of Harlem’s first black physicians. He opened a practice at his home where he attended to low-income patients, joining a complex struggle for better conditions for blacks in Harlem.
Petioni devoted much of his later life to African American and West Indian social, political, and economic, and medical organisations. He became president of the West Indies National Council, and joined the United Negro Improvement Association.In time, he became a founding director of the Carver Federal Savings and Loan Association which, much like the Penny Bank he had founded in his native Trinidad, helped poor people be able to save money, obtain mortgages, and purchase their own homes.Born in August 27, 1885, Dr. Charles Augustin Petioni died in New York on October 15, 1951.
His daughter, Dr. Muriel Petioni, born in Trinidad in 1914, followed in her father's footsteps, set up a private practice in the same office he had used for his practice, and worked diligently help underserved communities receive proper medical attention and equitable access to health care.More: 1. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience2. https://www.marxists.org/.../works/1939/10/negro3.htm...
