Alonzo Herndon Name Date Period

Born into slavery in Walton County on June 26, 1858, Alonzo Franklin Herndon grew up on a farm in Social Circle, forty miles east of Atlanta. He was the son of his white master, Frank Herndon, and a slave, Sophenie. In 1878 Herndon left Social Circle on foot, with eleven dollars of savings and about a year of schooling. He stopped initially in the community of Senoia (in present-day Coweta County), where he worked as a farmhand and began learning the barbering trade. After a few months Herndon migrated to the town of Jonesboro, in Clayton County. Here he opened his first barbershop. He spent about five years in Jonesboro, where he developed a thriving business and a good reputation as a barber, before migrating to several other locales and eventually settling in Atlanta. Arriving in early 1883, he secured employment as a barber in a shop on Marietta Street owned by William Dougherty Hutchins, an African American. After six months Herndon purchased half interest in the shop, entering into a partnership with one of the few free blacks operating barbering establishments since before the Civil War.

Business Success

Herndon's barbering business expanded, and by 1904 he owned three shops in Atlanta. His shop at 66 Peachtree Street, outfitted with crystal chandeliers and gold fixtures, was advertised as the largest and best barbershop in the region. According to the Atlanta Journal, Herndon and his all-black barbering staff were "known from Richmond all the way to Mobile as the best barbers in the South." Following the racial practices of the era, the black barbers served an exclusively white clientele composed of the city's leading lawyers, judges, politicians, and businessmen. As proprietor, Herndon personally saw to the barbering services provided to some of the most important figures in the state, earning their acquaintance and good will. His success in barbering was spectacular, and as his earnings grew, he invested in real estate in Atlanta and in Florida. Eventually he acquired more than 100 houses, a large block of commercial property on Auburn Avenue, and a large estate in Tavares, Florida. At his death in 1927, his real estate was assessed at nearly $325,000.

As his personal fortune grew, Herndon entered the field of insurance. In 1905 he purchased a failing mutual aid association, which he incorporated as the Atlanta Mutual Insurance Association. With Herndon playing a pivotal role as president and chief stockholder, the small association expanded its assets from $5,000 in 1905 to more than $400,000 by 1922. In 1922 the company was reorganized as the Atlanta Life Insurance Company and achieved legal reserve status, a position enjoyed by only four other black insurance companies at that time. The firm grew rapidly in the 1920s, expanding its operations into a half dozen new states, including Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas. Herndon also sought to save other failing black enterprises. Whenever possible, he reinsured the policyholders and merged the faltering business into Atlanta Life in an effort to conserve confidence in black businesses and save jobs for black men and women. Despite several crises in the industry and lean times generally, Atlanta Life under Herndon's leadership survived and progressed into the next decades as a secure and prosperous business.

Leadership and Community Involvement

Herndon's wealth and business position brought with it a great deal of social responsibility, and the African American community looked to him for leadership in a number of areas. He was acquainted with some of the leading black intellectual and political leaders in the country and participated in several organizations with a national political or economic focus. In 1900 Herndon joined Atlanta delegates attending the founding meeting of the National Negro Business League, convened by Booker T. Washington in Boston. When W. E. B. Du Bois called a meeting of selected black leaders to organize the Niagara Movement, Herndon was among the twenty-nine men who attended the founding meeting in 1905.

It was on the local level, however, that he maintained his most vigorous involvements. He gave generous support and resources to such local institutions and causes as the YMCA; Atlanta University; the Leonard Street, Carrie Steele, and Diana Pace orphanages; the Herndon Day Nursery; and the First Congregational Church. He also supported commercial activities, including the Southview Cemetery Association and the Atlanta State Savings Bank.

1. Last name of Herndon's second wife.

6. Last name of the civil rights leader who helped to establish the Niagara Movement.

9. At the time of his death, Alonzo Herndon was Atlanta's _________________ black citizen.

10. First name of Herndon's son from his first marriage.
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2. Alonzo Herndon was founder and _______________ of Atlanta Life Insurance Company.

3. The first name of Herndon's mother.

4. Last name of the civil rights leader who helped to create the National Negro Business League in Boston, Massachusetts.

5. County that was the birthplace of Alonzo Herndon.

7. Trade learned by Herndon while he was living in Senoia, Georgia.