Background: The North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company on Parrish Street in Durham, NC
In the early twentieth century, Parrish Street in Durham,
North Carolina, was the hub of African American business activity. This
four-block district was known as “Black Wall Street,” a reference to the
district of New York City that is home to the New York Stock Exchange and the
nation’s great financial firms. Although other cities had similar districts,
Durham’s was one of the most vital, and was nationally
known. Parrish Street bordered the Hayti community, Durham’s main
African American residential district, and the two districts together served as
the center of black life in Durham.
Forced out of politics by the successful “White Supremacy”
political campaign of 1898, Durham’s African American leaders turned their
talents to the business world instead. The African American community of Durham
was relatively prosperous and enjoyed better relations with its white
counterpart than prevailed in many other communities in the state. The idea of
an insurance company, moreover, fit in naturally with a tradition among African
Americans of self-help, mutual aid societies or fraternities. John Merrick,
born into slavery in 1859, had become by the late 1890s a business success in
Durham. Owner of half a dozen barber shops and a real estate business, Merrick
was also a member of the Grand United Order of True Reformers, a mutual benefit
society organized in Richmond in 1881 which had expanded into insurance and
banking. In 1898 Merrick brought together six of Durham’s leading black
business and professional men and organized North Carolina Mutual. Guided by
the “triumvirate” of John Merrick, Dr. Aaron M. Moore, and Charles Clinton
Spaulding, “The Company with a Soul and a Service” survived the hardship of its
first years to achieve success and help make Durham’s reputation as a center of
African American economic life.
On the first of April 1899 the North Carolina Mutual Life
Insurance Company opened for business in Durham, North Carolina. The first
month’s collections, after the payment of commissions, amounted only to $1.12,
but from such beginnings North Carolina Mutual grew to be the largest African
American managed financial institution in the United States.
In 1906, the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company,
the nation’s largest black-owned insurance company, moved its headquarters to
Parrish Street. It was soon joined by the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and the
founderd of North Carolina Mutual also invested in real estate and textiles.
National leaders W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington both visited the
city, in 1912 and 1910, respectively, and praised black entrepreneurship and
the tolerance of whites.
In the 1960s, urban renewal wiped out much of Hayti and
Durham’s black business community, but by that time, Parrish Street’s heyday
had passed.
Street wall art is available in a wide variety of colors, themes, and sizes. Much street wall art is very colorful, while others will be more monochrome in nature.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thooughts
ReplyDelete