Florida's First African-American Insurance Company--1901-2001
N 30° 19.917 W 081° 39.287
17R E 437058 N 3355750
The site of Florida's First African-American Insurance Company, as well as the historical marker about it, is located on Union Street at the intersection with Ocean Street in Jacksonville, Florida.
Waymark Code: WM3JGW
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 04/12/2008
Views: 81
The text on the marker reads as follows: "The Afro-American Insurance Company, formerly the Afro-American Industrial and Benefits Association, was founded in 1901 to provide affordable health insurance and death benefits to the state's African-Americans. Founded by the Reverend E.J. Gregg, E.W. Latson, Abraham Lincoln Lewis, A.W. Price, Dr. Arthur W. Smith, J.F. Valentine, and the Reverend J. Melton Waldron, the Afro's first office at 14 Ocean Street was destroyed by the great Jacksonville Fire two months after it opened on May 3, 1901. It then moved to 621 Florida Avenue, the home of treasurer and future president, Abraham Lincoln Lewis (1865-1947). From their next home office at 105 E. Union Street, the company wrote millions of dollars of insurance policies and started district offices in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas. Lewis formed the African-American Pension Bureau and in 1935, land was purchased on Amelia Island for the black resort called American Beach. On April 22, 1956, the company dedicated its new, million-dollar building at Ocean and Union Street. After over 80 years of serving black southerners, the company closed on July 17, 1987. The 11th Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church owns the Building."
Additional information about Abraham Lincoln Lewis is available on
The Great Floridians 2000 Program: "Abraham Lincoln Lewis rose from poverty to become one of Florida’s first African-American millionaires. He was born in 1865 in Madison County and moved with his family to the East Side of Jacksonville in 1876. Lewis was one of the founding partners of the Afro-American Industrial and Benefit Association, the state’s first chartered black insurance company. Although the company was destroyed in the Great Jacksonville Fire of 1901, Lewis rebuilt it, becoming the first manager of the association, which was renamed the Afro-American Insurance Company. In 1919 he became president of Afro-American Life, and in the 1920s began providing mortgages for individual homes. Lewis donated to public and private schools across the country for the education of African-American youth. In 1929 he built the Lincoln Golf and Country Club, a golf course where African-American celebrities from around the country came to play or dine. In 1935 he was instrumental in the creation of American Beach, a black summer haven on the coast of Amelia Island in Nassau County. Abraham Lincoln Lewis died in 1947. His Great Floridian plaque is located at Community Connections, A.L. Lewis Center, 3655 Ribault Scenic Drive, Jacksonville."