atie Alexander’s one-story home in the little Mississippi town of Rolling Fork sits at the corner of Magnolia and Sidney Alexander Streets. It is not a coincidence that her street shares her name. It used to be called Poplar Street, but it was renamed in 1989 to honor Katie’s father, a civil rights organizer who had been registering African Americans to vote at the time of his murder in September 1970. He was a casualty in Mississippi’s notoriously bloody civil rights struggle, shot to death in his home, just around the corner from where his daughter lives now.

Alexander had seven brothers and sisters, most of whom eventually left Mississippi. But Katie never really considered leaving. She says she needed to take care of her mother, and was too involved in her church to pull up stakes. So she stayed on in Rolling Fork, having a daughter, whom she raised as a single mom after her partner’s death from a heart attack. She took an office job with the municipal government and rented an apartment from a cousin.

Alexander, who is 59, says she’s dreamed of buying a home for years. But, with an income of only $28,000 a year, her credit was a problem. She thought she’d be rejected if she applied for a home loan, so she never tried.

A couple of years ago, she heard about financial literacy classes at the Bank of Anguilla. She’d dealt in the past with this particular bank, and it didn’t go well. About 30 years earlier, she had applied for a small loan there and was told she needed a co-signer, despite her savings. She withdrew all her money in anger. “I saw it as a farmers’ bank at that time,” she says, and not one particularly welcoming to African Americans like herself.

But the bank “changed its demeanor” over the years, Alexander says, and became a stronger ally to the Black community. So she signed up for the five-week class. At first, the students gathered at a building owned by the county, then at a library, and finally at a church. Most of the students were Black women in their 40s and 50s. They told the instructors horror stories about payday loans and debt collectors. Alexander’s problems were never that bad. But she felt she was spending too much money and needed to establish credit. She says the class changed her habits, and she now saves $100 each month.

The class also gave Alexander new relationships with bankers, some of whom attended each of the five class sessions. They decided that she qualified for a loan after getting to know her, despite her limited credit history. She had her eye on a house in town, so she sat down with Elise Cook, a loan officer, and worked out the details. In July 2015, her $39,000 loan was approved. Forty-five years after her father’s death, she owned a piece of the street named after him.

Clarksdale, Mississippi Clarksdale, Mississippi Hollandale, Mississippi Hollandale, Mississippi

Here in the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest regions in the United States, buying a home is often out of reach. And lenders have a history of unfairness to African Americans. As a result, it’s been difficult for Delta residents to build any assets. But stories like Alexander’s are standing that history on its head. In a region where foundations are scarce and nonprofits lack resources, local banks and credit unions are increasingly helping poor residents escape poverty by providing credit, teaching the dangers of payday lending, and encouraging the development of worker-owned cooperatives.

Unless you live in the Delta, you probably won’t recognize the names of the financial institutions doing this work. That’s because America’s largest ones — banks like Citibank, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase — tend to avoid low-income customers and rarely provide service in rural areas. These banks exist to maximize profit for their shareholders, and the small loans that Delta residents want are not particularly profitable.

To understand why, it helps to think like a banker.

All loans have overhead costs, including the salaries of the employees who process the loan. These costs are about the same whether the loan is for $5 million or $50,000. Since the bank makes money on the interest, the larger loan makes the bank much more money. It doesn’t help that loans to low-income people need customization and planning to make sure they don’t end up in default — the automated systems that large banks rely on won’t cut it.

So bankers tend to turn down loan applications from low-income people. While they argue they’re just making good business decisions, the result is that it’s difficult for the poor to accumulate wealth.

“In order to get from poverty to the middle class, you need a home and an education,” says Mehrsa Baradaran, a law professor at the University of Georgia and author of a book on the history of banking. “To get those, you need credit.”

The banks and credit unions profiled here still need to make a profit, but it’s not their only reason for existence. Like a nonprofit organization, they’re driven by a mission — to promote economic opportunity in their region and among the poor. Technically, they’re known as Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), certified members in a program operated by the U.S. Treasury Department.

In order to get from poverty to the middle class, you need a home and an education. To get those, you need credit." —Mehrsa Baradaran, law professor at the University of Georgia

These organizations have to prove to the government that they’re mission-driven, and that at least 50 percent of their assets are invested in low-income areas. Once they’re certified, they’re eligible for various types of monetary awards that encourage local investment and help to offset the fact that banking for the poor isn’t always profitable.

Though tiny by Washington, D.C., standards, the program has grown dramatically in the more than 20 years since it was passed into law as the Riegle Community Development and Regulatory Improvement Act. Congress allocated $50 million to the program in 1997. By 2015, that figure had increased to about $234 million. Today, there are more than 1,000 certified CDFIs around the United States. Researcher Steve Dubb of the Democracy Collaborative estimates that they control about 0.4 percent of all U.S. banking assets — again a miniscule amount, but a vital resource in a place like the Delta.

Mississippi has more CDFIs per capita than any other state. Its financial ecosystem is a unique place, where bankers and residents are coming to see one another as allies despite a difficult history. It’s a window into what the United States might look like if the government actively recruited banks and credit unions as allies in the fight against poverty.