Financial Greats

Seven African American entrepreneurs from Durham, North Carolina each contributed $50 in 1898 to form the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, a life insurance company whose mission was to offer what was known as “industrial insurance” to Blacks of modest means. Industrial insurance was basically burial insurance that provided a death benefit of $100 which was sufficient to cover a suitable funeral. Weekly insurance premiums of 10￠ were collected in-person by agents who consisted primarily of African American teachers and ministers.

Charles Clinton Spaulding was born on a farm in 1874 where he worked until 1894 when he moved in with an uncle in Durham to pursue his high school diploma which he received in 1898. Along the way, he held various “Negro” jobs including bellhop, dishwasher, waiter, and manager of an African American cooperative grocery store. His uncle, Dr. A.M. Moore, was one of the seven founders of what had been renamed the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Moore recruited Spaulding as the company’s first employee naming him general manager in 1900. Upon Moore’s death in 1923, the company promoted Spaulding to President.

?Spaulding served as president for the next thirty years creating what was for much of the 20th century the largest company in the U.S. run by African Americans. By the late 1980’s, the company had $8 billion of insurance coverage and maintained fifty offices across the country. Spaulding was also involved in a number of other financial institutions including the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, Banker’s Fire Insurance Company, and the Mutual Savings and Loan Association. Due in part to the success of these companies, Durham became known as “The Black Wall Street of America” and the “Capital of the Black Middle Class.” Spaulding achieved national prominence advising Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt. He was a Trustee of three educational institutions including Howard University and received Honorary Degrees from three other institutions. Perhaps most important, he was active in the Civil Rights Movement serving on the North Carolina Commission on Interracial Cooperation and the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs.

Sadly, the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company is currently being liquidated because it was the victim of a fraud that resulted in the loss of $34 million of critical capital. Moreover, its fortunes had been declining for many years as a result of the acceptance of African Americans as customers by what were formerly all white, mainline insurance companies