THE SOUTHERN TIMES

Alonzo Herndon (1858-1927)

When Alonzo Herndon died in 1927, he was Atlanta’s wealthiest black man, respected for his support of local black charities.But the beginning of his life couldn’t have been more different. In 1858, Herndon was born a slave on a Walton County Plantation. His mother was a slave, his father a white slave owner.

 

When the Civil War ended, Herndon’s father forced Alonzo, his mother, brother and grandparents to all leave. To support his family, Herndon opened a barbershop for whites in Jonesboro; however, business was thought to be more profitable in Atlanta, so he began working as barber there. By 1904, he owned three barbershops in Atlanta and Herndon, and his black staff were known as the South’s best barbers.

 

In 1905, Herndon established Atlanta Mutual Insurance Association, later known as the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. That first year, he opened 23 offices in Georgia run only by African American college gradutes. Today, Atlanta Life Insurance operates in seventeen states with assets over $200 million and a myriad customers. Even now, it is still one of America’s largest African American-owned financial institutions.

 

Facing numerous obstacles on his journey, Alonzo Herndon changed his life, and the lives of all his black employees, by ambitiously working to attain financial success, which can not be explained better than by Alonzo Herndon himself: 

 

"Some of us sit and wait for opportunity when it is always with us."