Founded by Alonzo Herndon, a prosperous Black barber and entrepreneur who rose from enslavement to become the wealthiest African American in Atlanta,by 1927. Atlanta Life is the leading African American stock-owned insurance company in the nation. As one of the strongest Black financial institutions to emerge in the early twentieth century, Atlanta Life is a premier example of the quest of African Americans to gain an economic foothold.
Atlanta Life began as a small insurance association with a capital investment of $5,000. For many years it operated as a mutual assessment enterprise. The policyholders, exceeding 23,000 by the end of 1909, provided the majority of the revenue through premium payments and periodic assessments. The company offered one contract, an industrial health and accident policy, which paid a small sum upon the death of a policyholder. In 1916 the firm strengthened its financial base by becoming a stockholder organization. Using his personal resources to support the enterprise, Herndon purchased approximately 90 percent of Atlanta Life’s stock.
As founder and first president, Alonzo Herndon’s leadership of Atlanta Life blended ideals of racial self-help and independent entrepreneurship. He belonged to the group of Black capitalists whose activities transformed mutual aid and benevolent societies, church organizations, secret associations, and other social endeavors into more-efficient business operations. Influenced by Booker T. Washington and the movement to expand Black business involvement, Herndon joined men like John Merrick, organizer of the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company of Durham, North Carolina, and Samuel Wilson Rutherford, founder of the National Benefit Insurance Company in Washington, D.C., to solidify the link between mutual aid and capitalism.