Funeral Programs & Obituaries

The Afro-American Industrial and Benefits Association, founded in 1901, in Jacksonville, Florida, would become Afro-American Life Insurance. The company provided health and burial insurance at affordable prices for Black people, who could not get policies at white-owned companies. 

Horses and carriages in front of the funeral home of C.W. Franklin, undertaker, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Source: W.E.B. Du Bois, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Powell Funeral Home in Mound Bayou, Mississippi.

Source: Russell, L. (1939), Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The first Black-owned insurance company in the United States was the Southern Aid Society of Virginia, founded in 1893. It provided burial insurance for African-Americans who were not welcomed at white-owned companies because of racial discrimination.

Source: Wikimedia Commons, which cites the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries.

Advertisement for the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, published in the Negro Almanac and Statistics in 1903. During its heyday, it was the largest Black-owned insurance company in the United States, providing services, such as burial insurance, to African Americans when white-owned companies would not.

Source: New York Public Library Digital Collections

The Afro-American Industrial and Benefits Association, founded in 1901, in Jacksonville, Florida, would become Afro-American Life Insurance. The company provided health and burial insurance at affordable prices for Black people, who could not get policies at white-owned companies.