George McReynolds and His Wife on the Suit That Changed Merrill

This Bloomberg Markets article is part of “The Only One in the Room,” an oral history of the Black experience on Wall Street.

George McReynolds, 75, joined Merrill Lynch in 1983. He was one of just a few Black brokers for the company in Tennessee. In 2005 he brought a racial discrimination lawsuit that was later allowed to be a class action. In 2013, after Bank of America Corp. bought Merrill, the company reached a settlement for $160 million, then a Wall Street record, which covered about 1,400 Black brokers. McReynolds retired last year. Elaine McReynolds, his wife, was an insurance commissioner for the state of Tennessee and an administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.