American Bank of Oklahoma agreed to pay more than $1.15 million in August 2023 to resolve DOJ allegations of redlining majority-Black and Hispanic Tulsa neighborhoods from 2017–2021, including excluding all majority-minority census tracts from its designated service area, assigning no loan officers to those communities, and permitting bank loan officers and executives to exchange racist emails containing racial slurs using their ABOK email accounts.

American Bank of Oklahoma — DOJ $1.15 Million Redlining Settlement, Tulsa (2023)

Outcome: American Bank of Oklahoma agreed to pay more than $1.15 million in August 2023 to resolve DOJ allegations of redlining majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the Tulsa market from 2017 through 2021 — a case aggravated by evidence that loan officers and executives at the bank sent and received racist emails containing racial slurs using their ABOK email accounts.

American Bank of Oklahoma, headquartered in Tulsa, was found by the DOJ to have engaged in a pattern or practice of unlawful redlining in violation of the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The bank's discriminatory practices operated through three distinct mechanisms. First, ABOK deliberately designated its Tulsa Metropolitan Service Area to exclude all majority-Black and Hispanic census tracts — structuring its very definition of its service territory to omit the communities it was obligated to serve. Second, consistent with this geographic exclusion, the bank did not assign a single mortgage loan officer to conduct outreach in any majority-Black or Hispanic area of Tulsa. Third — and as an aggravating factor that elevated the case's profile — loan officers and executives communicated with each other via ABOK-issued email accounts using racial slurs and racist content, providing direct evidence of discriminatory intent within the bank's workforce.

The connection to Tulsa's history of racial violence was noted in coverage of the settlement: the DOJ settlement required the bank to open a new community-oriented loan production office in a historically Black area of Tulsa — a significant requirement given that Tulsa's Greenwood District was the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, which destroyed what had been called "Black Wall Street."

The $1.15 million settlement allocated $950,000 to a loan subsidy fund for majority-Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and $100,000 for advertising and consumer education. The bank was also required to employ two mortgage loan officers dedicated to serving minority communities and to host at least six Spanish-language consumer financial education seminars per year.

Primary Source: American Bank of Oklahoma Press Release — DOJ Settlement