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While John Ludwell-Lofton was schooled by Selene Slocum-Lofton and laughed at by John Worley, his colleague Thomas Bolling tried to investigate the extent of the potential problem of the exodus of Black money from their bank.

This was not as easy as one would think, owing to the legacy of slavery and of history.

In the first place, the traditional names of Africa had been taken from its people in America, meaning that you couldn't always tell by looking at an account name if the owner of it was Black or White.

Further legacy: Lofton County had some eager sexual predators as slave owners – thus they had a lot of mulatto children that by 2020 had blended either into Black society with their more white-looking names, or were walking around in White society unnoticed with the name, but still often siding with their foremothers' people, more and more as the stories were being told louder and louder in Lofton County.

Still further legacy proceeding to that date in 2020: there was an unspoken rule across the United States that former slaves who had *been* capital were to be largely locked out of accessing the capital their labor had helped produce – call it revenge for deciding to be human and free and bankrupting their masters in doing so, a revenge extended in perpetuity if slavery could not be.  By 2020 this had relaxed somewhat, but there were many ways banks more dedicated to the lost cause coded documents to avoid charges of open discrimination while continuing to discriminate just as dramatically.

The problem was that Thomas Bolling hadn't been given the coding keys, meaning he had to try to work out who had been closing accounts without that information at hand.

“If all these accounts just said White and at least Negro, it would be easier,” he said.

But since 1972, that had been too dangerous. 

That massacre of Black citizens insisting on their rights in Tinyville had brought the feds down into Lofton County – even for Richard Nixon and his orientation toward the “Southern Strategy,” that had been too much, and thus civil rights had at last come to one of Virginia's few holdout counties.  

So, the unrelenting hatred of the county's elite, including in financing, had been forced into working more subtly.

The problem was, no one had anticipated that the Negroes in 2020 would be not a commodity to be locked out, but desperately needed to stay in. 

Thus, Thomas Bolling did not have the tools at hand to quickly get an understanding of how quickly they were leaving mainstream banking in Lofton County, and he said as much to his much-rattled colleague John Ludwell-Lofton, who was sipping coffee in the banker's lounge and trying to get himself together after his withering encounter with Selene Slocum-Lofton.

“If it's a big bump that left us in October, and a slow and steady trickle since, we might get them back if we do a nice marketing campaign in February, and hire a few more young, fresh dark-skinned faces,” he said.  “However, it may also may be what happens in a dam being damaged …initial big hit sustained, little leak undermining the dam's remaining strength.  But I can't tell – we can't talk straight about how much money Black people have with us because the need to discriminate has kept that pretty much hidden except to those that know the codes and can be trusted to do that work.  

“The other thing, John; the local banks have all been weakened by the aftermath of the Ridgeline Fire, and the competition among us and the national banks is fierce.  I'm not going to be able to get a quick answer from our competitors of any depth because the very question suggests weakness on our part, and they are not going to give me any information that might suggest growing weakness on their part.”

“Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said we should figure out who the appropriate Black leadership is, but asking over there is admitting defeat too – that we even need to ask!” Mr. Ludwell-Lofton said.  “Can you imagine what their horrible paper would make of that?”

“True enough – our bank doesn't need public humiliation in the *Lofton County Free Voice*,” Mr. Bolling said.  “That's what makes it hard to come down on the few Black employees and bully the information out of them – nowadays, they feel like they can just quit, tell the *Free Voice* why, and sit back and expect big settlement checks out of the resulting lawsuits.”

“Yes, it's a bad situation all around, but you know, old Braxton would have found a way to bribe somebody,” Mr. Ludwell-Lofton said.

“True enough, although, again, that could blow up spectacularly in the end, but it's safer than the other ideas because people love money enough to stay quiet.  We've just got to find the right person who will sell out the group and tell us what is going on.  Historically, there is always one.”

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