In 1898, the American financial system had a specific label for Black people: "Uninsurable." They said we died too young. They said we were too poor. They wrote us out of the equation.
But John Merrick, a barber in Durham, NC, had a different plan. While shaving the throats of the South's most powerful white titans, he wasn't just making small talk. He was stealing their blueprint.
This is the true story of North Carolina Mutual, the company that insured the uninsurable, funded the Civil Rights Movement, and built a "Black Wall Street"
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Sources:
"Black Business in the New South: A Social History of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company" by Walter B. Weare
"John Merrick: A Biographical Sketch" by R. McCants Andrews (1920)
"An Economic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes" by M. S. Stuart (1940)
"The Negro as Capitalist" by Abram Lincoln Harris (1936)