From Enslaved to Millionaire on Sweet Auburn Ave.

 

From Enslaved to Millionaire on Sweet Auburn Ave.

Alonzo Herndon

Abstract

Alonzo Herndon was one of the many Entrepreneurs who helped build Auburn Avenue into one of the most prosperous African American Business centers in the United States during the early 1900s. His Business acumen took him from enslavement to Barber to Investor becoming the country's first Black Millionaire by the time of his death in 1927. His adaptability allowed him to continue to prosper despite losing one of his three  barbershops in the 1906 Race Massacre in Atlanta, and thanks to his investment in real estate in the Atlanta Area he was able to rebuild and thrive. He was also the founder of the Atlanta Mutual Life Insurance company which maintained its headquarters in a building he owned on Auburn Ave. Alonzo Herndon, along with other African American Entrainers turned Auburn Ave into the economic center it would be until the Civil Rights era.

 

For this blog, we will return to the previous discussion about Atlanta’s Auburn Avenue, affectionately known as “Sweet Auburn.” The Area sits roughly two miles from downtown Peachtree Street and was dubbed “The richest Negro street in the world” by Fortune Magazine in 1956.[1]  For decades Auburn Avenue was the center of Black business and prosperity in Atlanta Georgia. The area was born out necessity after of the violence of the Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906, which saw the death of between twenty-four and forty African American men and the destruction of countless Black-owned businesses along Peachtree Street. Black businesses, no longer welcome or safe in the downtown area of Peachtree Street where they operated side by side with White owned businesses, they moved two miles away to Wheat Street, later renamed Auburn Avenue, it quickly became a focal point for business in Atlanta’s African American community.[2]

This blog will take a deeper look at one of the many entrepreneurs who helped Auburn Avenue become “Sweet Auburn” Mr. Alonzo Herndon. Born enslaved in Walton County Georgia in 1858, He would go from Enslavement to Entrepreneur ultimately becoming America’s first Black Millionaire by the time of his death in 1927.[3] Already a successful barber by the time of the Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906, he would eventually become a real estate developer, owner of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company as well an investor in Black-owned business, his accomplishments are all the more impressive given the limitations and obstacles faced by Black people in the Jim Crow South

Hendon showed his entrepreneurial spirit from an early age, selling peanuts and homemade wares whenever he found the time in his youth, saving as much money as he could with the eventual goal of leaving Social Circle, Georgia. He eventually found a trade, Barbering, and arrived in Atlanta in 1873 where he found work in a shop downtown on Marietta Street. Not satisfied to simply work as a Barber, he would buy a half interest in the shop less than a year later and by 1904 he owned three shops, including his flagship shop at 66 Peachtree Street, a very prominent location which he purchased in 1902.[4] That shop was one of the most luxurious and ornate shops in Atlanta, boasting crystal chandeliers and gold fixtures it boasted in advertisements that it was the biggest and best in the region with the best barbers in the South.[5]  Like many Black-owned Barbershops the downtown shop, while being staffed entirely by Black men, would not serve any Black customers. The most successful shops serve an elite white clientele., Hendon counted many prominent politicians and businessmen as his clients. This however did not save his shop from being destroyed during the Atlanta Massacre, though he would reopen serving both White and Black patrons.[6]

However, by this time he had already diversified and spread into other businesses. Like many of Atlanta’s Black Business community, he had begun to invest in real estate whenever possible. By 1900 he was worth approximately $12,750, which would grow to approximately $23,000 by 1910 97% of which was invested in real estate in the Atlanta area. Some of which had been invested in the Sweet Auburn Avenue area before 1906. He eventually owned several of the most prominent and high-value commercial properties in the area including the Atlanta Loan and Trust building as well as more than 100 homes in Florida.[7]

Of his many successful ventures Atlanta Mutual  Life Insurance stands out as one of the most successful. One of a few Black-owned insurance companies, at one point ranking second, Hendon invested in Atlanta Mutual, a mutual aid society, which was on the verge of floundering for not having the required $5,000 in funds required by Georgia law to protect policyholders. Herndon would invest the needed $5,000 in Atlanta Mutual and eventually become the owner of the aid society which he would rename Atlanta Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1920 with its headquarters in the Atlanta Loan and Trust Building, which he already owned, renaming the building after the new Business. He then went about understanding the business, life insurance was still a new idea for African-Americans at the time, and training workforce agents who understood how to educate their customers on the new product his new agents went to work. Within three months they amassed six thousand policyholders with around $181,000 in investment.[8]

Over the course of his lifetime, Alonzo Herndon would become known as the “Greatest Negro Financier.” His three Atlanta Barbershops employed roughly 75 Barbers at the height of operation and include not only one of the most ornate shops in Atlanta but one located in one of Atlanta’s best hotels. In the early years of Atlanta Mutual, he purchased small asset firms to help grow the company and eventually purchased 15 other Black-owned insurance companies and spread to several other states. He also invented extensively in real estate owning more the $324,000 in residential and commercial properties much of which in Sweet Auburn. It is easy to see how Alonzo Herndon helped out the sweet in “Sweet Auburn.”

  

Allison Dorsey, To Build Our Lives Together: Community Formation in Black Atlanta, 1875-1906 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004).

 Maurice J. Hobson, The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017)

Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race, Entrepreneurship, Twayne’s Evolution of Modern Business Series (New York: MacMillan Library Reference USA, 1998)

Carole Merritt, The Herndons: An Atlanta Family (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 2002)

“Preserving the Neighborhood That Gave Us Martin Luther King Jr.,” accessed February 9, 2024, https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/life-with-gracie-preserving-sweet-auburn-one-block-time/TcTB7uEFca4bgHcsH4HvUK/

DOUGLAS BRISTOL, “From Outposts to Enclaves: A Social History of Black Barbers from 1750 1915,” Enterprise & Society 5, no. 4 (2004): 594–606

National Endowment for the Humanities, “Atlanta Semi-Weekly Journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, December 11, 1902, Image 1,” no. 1902/12/11 (December 11, 1902), https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86090947/1902-12-11/ed-1/seq-1/

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[1] “Preserving the Neighborhood That Gave Us Martin Luther King Jr.,” accessed February1, 2024, https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/life-with-gracie-preserving-sweet-auburn-one-block-time/TcTB7uEFca4bgHcsH4HvUK/.

[2] Maurice J. Hobson, The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

[3] National Endowment for the Humanities, “The Monitor. (Omaha, Neb.) 1915-1928, July 29, 1927, Image 1,” no. 1927/07/29 (July 29, 1927), https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/00225879/1927-07-29/ed-1/seq-1/.

 

[4] Carole Merritt, The Herndons: An Atlanta Family (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 2002).

[5] “Atlanta Semi-Weekly Journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, December 11, 1902, Image 1,” no. 1902/12/11 (December 11, 1902), https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86090947/1902-12-11/ed-1/seq-1/.

[6] DOUGLAS BRISTOL, “From Outposts to Enclaves: A Social History of Black Barbers from 1750 1915,” Enterprise & Society 5, no. 4 (2004): 594–606.

[7] Allison Dorsey, To Build Our Lives Together: Community Formation in Black Atlanta, 1875-1906 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004).

[8] Carole Merritt, The Herndons: An Atlanta Family (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 2002).