OVER THE PAST DECADE, the number of minority-owned commercial banks in the United States has expanded from ten to forty-four and their assets have increased more than tenfold, to $673 million. Various aspects of the performance of these banks as well as their potential role in community economic development have been examined by other authors.However, the continually increasing growth in the number of such institutions together with the recent difficulties experienced by several of the newer ones suggest the need for additional analysis. The differences in the portfolio management and operating procedures of the older and newer minority banks reported by Andrew Brimmer [7] and John Boorman [3] indicate that it may be inappropriate to aggregate over all minority-owned banks when analyzing their performance. As a result, the present study concentrates solely on the experience of the eight minority-owned banks founded between 1963 and 1965 and compares their performance with that of a sample of similarly situated nonminority banks.2 The nonminority banks in the comparative sample were chosen to insure similarity with the maturity, location and general economic environment of the minority-owned banks.3 The sample selection criteria employed to define the comparative sample are: