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'Only By Grace' Author Dr. Edward D. Irons

On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Dr. Edward D. Irons, noted educator, financial and business executive, and author of ‘Only By Grace.’

Irons spent more than sixty years as a university educator; a business, government and educational executive; a management and financial consultant to business, banks and to the U.S. and foreign governments including the United Nations Economic Commission on Africa. He served on a number of corporate boards and numerous nonprofit organizations.

He was appointed to boards and commissions by four Atlanta mayors, three Georgia governors, and one Oklahoma governor. He became the principal organizer and first president of Riverside National Bank, located Houston, Texas, in 1964. The bank group became the first national charter to be granted to African Americans in this country during the preceding 40-years, and in the process, a renaissance of minority bank ownership in this nation was initiated, which was his vision.

His parents never finished high school; however, he managed to earn a Ph.D. in Finance from Harvard University Graduate School of Businessin 1960, before it was common or acceptable for African Americans to be admitted to Ivy League Schools. 

John L. Hanson is the producer and host of the nationally syndicated radio series In Black America. It’s heard on home station KUT Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m., as well as weekly on close to 20 stations across the country. The weekly podcast of IBA, the only nationally broadcast black-oriented public affairs radio program, is one of KUT’s most popular podcasts.