Abstract:
When African-American residents in Chatham and Lee Counties encountered difficulty in securing credit and other financial services, Bishop Leach and several others founded the Chatham-Lee Credit Union. Leach managed it from a backyard building for forty years. When he died in 1997, he son, Jimmy Leach, took over the day-to-day operations. The credit union, now with $2.81 million in assets, was awarded an INDEPENDENT 1998 Citizen Award.