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Advice not needed

As they came out of college, Eakes and Wright wanted to fulfill the unmet promise of the civil rights movement. They picked Durham as a home base because of its yeasty mix of rich and poor, academics and factory workers.

In the early 1980s, the state's textile and furniture industries were being ravaged by corporate raiders and cheap imports. The couple's first notion was to provide legal and financial advice to workers who wanted to buy the mill or factory where they worked.

But they discovered a simple truth: Their clients didn't need advice; they needed money.

Eakes and Wright created the Self-Help Credit Union in 1984, with the raffle of a now-legendary chocolate cake, fresh from a New Bern bakery that they helped an unemployed textile worker named Percy White establish. The raffle plopped $77 in Self-Help's coffers.

Their first three business clients failed, leading them to a second truth: For long-term survival, a small-business owner needs an asset to secure a steady line of credit. That meant owning a home.

Building a ladder of wealth to climb out of poverty is the core credo of Self-Help's mortgages and business loans.

On the business side, the outfit started small, with "microloans" of less than $25,000, seeded by support from the federal Small Business Administration. Over time, those loans grew larger as Self-Help joined partnerships with commercial banks and the federal small-business agency.

Self-Help also has loaned millions to child-care centers and public charter schools, serving thousands of children in North Carolina and other states. The outfit has bought vacant downtown office buildings in Durham, Asheville and other North Carolina cities, renovating historic sites and leasing the space to nonprofits, foundations and others.

Using the bottom-line proof of Self-Help's balance sheets, Eakes persuaded some of the biggest lenders in North Carolina, including Wachovia, to make more loans to the working poor and people with less-than-perfect credit.

He also launched an ambitious partnership with the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae. The partnership has so far bought $3.6 billion in "subprime" loans from commercial banks in 47 states and the District of Columbia, extracting a promise from those banks to lend more money to people who don't have the income, credit rating or savings to qualify for a traditional mortgage.

And here's the twist: Eakes, using a $50 million grant from the Ford Foundation, said Self-Help would assume the risk for every loan he bought and resold to Fannie Mae.

"It's amazing -- this little old credit union in Durham, N.C., has created a secondary market," said N.C. Banking Commissioner Joseph Smith. "It's pioneering work, and it's the lasting legacy of Self-Help."

Both programs have expanded Self-Help's reach and made it easier for poor people to grab their slice of the American Dream.

Evangelical firebrand

But Eakes isn't satisfied with helping the working poor create their own wealth. He's also a zealous defender of that wealth.

Eakes played a crucial role in the creation of North Carolina's 1999 anti-predatory lending law -- the nation's first comprehensive ban on packing loans with high, hidden costs that can cause borrowers to lose their homes.

He also quit a voluntary consulting post with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina to whip up opposition to the nonprofit health insurance outfit's 1997 attempt to steamroll legislation that would convert it into a for-profit corporation.

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