Alvin J. Boutte
American banker and businessman
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. The Chicago Tribune once described him as a "moderate militant."
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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alvin J. Boutte” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.