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 Business in 1960, before it was common or acceptable for African Americans to be admitted to Ivy League Schools.
