Alvin J. Boutte

Alvin J. Boutte Sr. (October 10, 1929 – April 1, 2012) was an American banker and businessman. He was co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Independence Bank — the largest Black-owned bank in the United States in the 1970s — and its holding company, Indecorp, Inc., which reclaimed that title in the 1990s with more than $200 million in assets.

He was connected to many civil rights leaders of the 20th century, including Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, and Harold Washington.

Early life

Boutte was born and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the youngest of 10 children in a Louisiana Creole family. His parents were Arthur Hyacinthe Boutte, Sr., and the former Adorea Darensbourg. Arthur Boutte was listed as an "odd-job laborer" in the 1930 census and an office janitor in the 1940 census.

Growing up in Jim Crow Louisiana, the Bouttes faced racism and discrimination. Speaking of his father, Boutte told a biographer: "I can remember how he'd dress me up and we'd walk down to the voting place and they'd tell him, 'You know you can't vote.' He'd just walk back and try again the next time. I guess I should be bitter, but I'm not."

Boutte attended Sacred Heart Catholic High School in Lake Charles and then Xavier University of Louisiana on a basketball scholarship, earning a bachelor's degree in pharmacology in 1951. One of his classmates there was Ernest "Dutch" Morial, who would later become the first Black mayor of New Orleans.

After graduation, Boutte joined the U.S. Army, attending Officer Candidate School, where he finished second in a class of 220. He was honorably discharged in 1954 with the rank of captain, having been stationed in Germany. Boutte arranged what was at the time the largest corporate loan ever made by American minority-owned institutions—$12 million to the auto-parts manufacturer Borg-Warner—by assembling a syndicate of 80 Black- and women-owned banks. In 1981, Boutte took over the bank's chairmanship from Johnson.

In 1988, Independence Bank – now part of the Boutte-created holding company Indecorp – announced it was buying Chicago's Drexel National Bank, the first time a Black-owned bank had ever purchased a financially healthy white-owned bank. Together, Independence and Drexel had assets of $227 million, making Indecorp again the largest Black-owned banking company. He expanded the banks' work in new directions, including running foreign currency exchange at O'Hare International Airport.

But in a newly deregulated banking environment, Indecorp had trouble competing with increasingly large white banks. An attempted sale-merger with Black-owned Omnibanc Corp. of Detroit fell through in 1994. At the time of its sale, Indecorp held assets of an estimated $279 million. ShoreBank collapsed in 2010 as a result of losses during the Great Recession.

Activism and politics

Boutte was an active supporter of the civil rights movement and African American interests. In the 1960s, he led a group of Chicago businessmen who raised $55,000 to support the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the work of Martin Luther King Jr. The convention issued the Gary Declaration, which called for Black Americans "to consolidate and organize our own Black role as the vanguard in the struggle for a new society. To accept the challenge is to move to independent Black politics...History leaves us no other choice. White politics has not and cannot bring the changes we need."

He was a longtime ally of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, serving on the first board of his Operation PUSH and later becoming its chairman. He was also vice president of the Chicago Urban League, and a fundraiser for the Chicago NAACP. The committee selected Harold Washington, but in the end he declined to run. Washington instead ran for Congress, winning in 1980 and 1982.

Immediately after that 1982 re-election, Boutte was the first person approached to fund a potential Washington run for mayor. He committed to raise $50,000; Washington announced his candidacy a few days later. Boutte was considered key to his campaign, which ended with his election as the city's first Black mayor.

In 1993, Boutte was part of a group of businessmen who brought the newly freed Nelson Mandela to Chicago to raise funds for the African National Congress.

Civic and business interests

Boutte was active in many Chicago civic organizations, sitting on the boards of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, as well as serving as vice chairman of the city's Better Business Bureau. In business, he was a board member of the Johnson Products Company and Chicago Metropolitan Mutual Assurance, both Black-owned businesses in Chicago, as well as Midway Airlines and Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois.

Personal life

Boutte married Barbara Gonzaque, whom he met at Xavier. They had four children, daughters Janice and Jeanette and sons Gregory and Alvin, Jr.

Alvin Boutte died on April 1, 2012, at his home in Hazel Crest, Illinois, at age 82. His widow Barbara died in 2017.