The NorthStar’s Week in Black History

September 6 through September 12

September 6

1905 ----- Alonzo F. Herndon, a wealthy African-American barber and real estate investor, founded the Atlanta Life Insurance Company on this date.

A former slave, raised by parents who became sharecroppers following the Civil War, Alonzo Herndon worked as a farmhand, studied barbering and saved nearly all of his wages in order to buy his first barbershop in downtown Atlanta.  Eventually, he owned and operated a string of barbershops in the city.  The shops were distinctive because they were more elegant than most, featuring marble floors and chandeliers.

By 1900, Herndon, who had been investing heavily in real estate, was the largest African-American property owner in Atlanta.  He soon became Atlanta’s first black millionaire.

The Atlanta Life Insurance Company was started with an initial investment of $5000.  The company offered an industrial health and accident policy that paid a modest sum to the policy’s beneficiary upon the death of  the policyholder.

Within four years, the insurance firm had enrolled 23,000 policyholders, and by 1910, the company had stockholders.  

When Herndon died in 1927, his only child, Norris Herndon, succeeded him in business.  In 1947, Norris founded the Alonzo F. and Norris B. Herndon Foundation, a charitable trust that, among other things, supports the operation of the Herndon family home as a historical museum and a standing tribute to African-American determination.

When Norris Herndon retired from the insurance company in 1973, the firm had $84.5 million in assets and $345
million in insurance in force.

In 2001, the Atlanta Life Insurance Company became a financial services concern and adopted a new name, the Atlanta Life Financial Group.  The company now serves two million customers and has more than $20 billion of life insurance in force.

Alonzo Herndon’s Atlanta home was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2000.  The home, designed primarily by Herndon’s first wife, Adrienne, an instructor at Atlanta University, was completed in 1910.  Mrs. Herndon died shortly after the house was finished.  A two-story, 15-room Beaux Arts mansion, the house was built entirely by black tradesmen and craftsmen.

Tours of the house are now offered twice weekly and by special appointment.


September 7

1917 ----- Jacob Lawrence, the best-known 20th century African-American painter, was born on this date in Atlantic City, N. J.

Raised in Atlantic City and in Harlem, Lawrence enrolled as an adolescent in the Utopia Children’s Center, an after-school arts program in Harlem.  His artistic ability was considerable and was soon apparent to others.  Lawrence participated in every available Harlem arts program.

Exposed to many famous African-American artists of the day, including Augusta Savage and Charles Alton, Lawrence was both inspired and encouraged to pursue art.  He also studied African-American history, which was the basis for
many of his paintings.

Granted a scholarship to the American Artists School, Lawrence was able following graduation to secure employment with the Works Progress Administration, or WPA.

At 2l, he prepared a series of paintings of Toussaint L’Overture, the Haitian general.  These paintings were exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art.  Lawrence followed these works with paintings of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and abolitionist John Brown.

At 23, the prolific Lawrence completed a 60-panel set of narrative paintings he titled Migration of the Negro.  These paintings are now referred to as The Migration Series and depict the challenges and the struggles faced by African Americans who left the rural South after World War I and traveled to Northern cities, hoping to find employment and greater personal freedom.

In the 1940s, Jacob Lawrence had his first major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Following that exhibition, Lawrence continued to paint and later became a teacher as well. An increasing number of his paintings were purchased and hung by major American museums.

In 1970, Lawrence and his wife, fellow painter Gwendolyn Knight, whom he married in 1941, relocated to Seattle, where Lawrence assumed a post as an art professor at the University of Washington.  At that time, Lawrence produced a series of paintings of African-American pioneer George Washington Bush, who had helped to open the West.  At the behest of the university, Lawrence also illustrated in 1987 an edition of Aesop’s Fables, published by the University of Washington.

Lawrence was given the prestigious Springarn Award n 1970 in recognition of his work as a painter and as a  teacher.

Jacob Lawrence’s paintings can been seen in many of America’s most-respected art museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Phillips Collection.

Lawrence died in Seattle in 2000 at the age of 82.


September 8

1925 ----- Ossain Sweet, MD, an African-American physician, bought and moved into a home on Garland Street in an all-white neighborhood in Detroit on this date.  A day later, all hell broke loose, and Dr. Sweet was arrested along with ten others and charged with murder.  The NAACP stepped in to aid in their defense in the two trials that followed and riveted the nation.

On the night of September 9, 400 to 500 whites formed a mob just outside of the Sweets’ home and pelted the house with stones.  Detroit policemen were deployed to protect the house and its occupants and they stationed themselves around it.

In addition to Sweet, his wife, Gladys, and their infant daughter, Iva, there were nine others, each of them either family members or friends, guarding the inside of the house.  All of the men in the house were armed in anticipation of trouble.

Shots were fired from the second story window of the house.  One man was killed, and another man was wounded as a result.  Policemen entered the Sweet home and arrested Dr. Sweet, his wife and the nine others, charging them all with murder.

Hearing of the incident, the NAACP offered to help the Sweets and they hired Clarence Darrow, the country’s most able and respected attorney, to handle their defense.

The first trial ended in a stalemate and was declared a mistrial.  Darrow won the case in a second trial, and Dr. Sweet was acquitted on all charges.  Judge Frank Murphy presided at the trial; he made it clear to the jury that blacks as well as whites had the right to defend their homes from attack.  Judge Murphy later became governor of Michigan (1937-1940), Attorney General of the United States (1939-1940) and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1946-1949).

Dr. Sweet and his family moved back into the Garland Street house, but further tragedies unfolded.  In 1926, the Sweets’ two-year-old daughter died from tuberculosis and shortly thereafter, Mrs. Sweet also died from the illness.

Dr. Sweet forged a career in politics and ran for four different offices, but lost each race.  He married twice, but both marriages ended in divorce.  In 1944, he sold the house on Garland Street, bought a pharmacy and lived in the apartment above it.

In 1960, Dr. Sweet committed suicide, following several years of suffering chronic health problems and depression.

(Editor’s note:  Kevin Boyle, a history professor at Ohio State University, wrote a book about the Sweet trials, titled Arc of Justice:  A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age (Henry Holt and Co., 2004).  The book, now out of print and available only through used-book sellers, won the National Book Award in 2004.)


September 9

1739 ----- The Stono Rebellion, the largest slave revolt in the British-held mainland colonies, began on this date, when 20 enslaved Africans from the Stono River area of South Carolina banded together and marched south.

Sixty more African slaves joined those already marching, and members of their troops killed 25 whites before being met by the South Carolina militia.

A battle ensued between the slaves and the militia.  Twenty more whites and 44 Africans were killed before the conflict ended.

As a result of the revolt, the South Carolina legislature passed the Negro Act of 1740.  The act forbade slave assembly, slaves’ access to education and slave mobility.

The site on the Stono River where the rebellion began was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1974.


September 10

1930 ---- Banker Charles E. Mitchell was appointed ambassador to Liberia on this day. Mitchell served in the post until 1933.


September 11

1962 ---- Ku Klux Klan members shot and wounded two voter-registration workers on this day in Ruleville, Miss.

The voter registration workers were in the home of Joe McDonald when the gunmen fired through the home’s window,  Fannie Lou Hamer, leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, testified before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Committee in Atlantic City on August 22, 1964.The gunshot victims were women, Hamer said. Klan members also fired 16 bullets into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker, where Hammer was staying.

In 1962, only 6.7 per cent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. In response to the shootings, James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating  Committee asked President John F. Kennedy to convene a conference to stop the wave of terrorism sweeping the South, according to the Library of Congress.


September 12

1956 ----- Under protection of the National Guard, four black students enrolled in the Clay Elementary School in Webster County, Ky., on this day.  

Nearly all of the white students boycotted the school, but the National Guard, which had been activated by Kentucky Gov. A. B. “Happy” Chandler kept order outside the building, according to the paper Sturgis and Clay: Showdown for Desegregation in Kentucky Education. The four black students were Bobby Carl Copeland, 12, Samuel Lee Copeland, 14, James Gordon, 10 and Teresa Gordon, 8.

On September 13, Kentucky Attorney General Jo M. Ferguson ruled that since the Webster County School Board had not made provisions for an orderly process for school desegregation, the black children could not be admitted until the school board made adequate plans.

The Louisville, Ky., NAACP sued the Webster County school board in federal court. On Dec. 12, 1956, U.S. District Court Judge Henry L. Brooks directed Webster to file a desegregation plan with the court by February 4, 1957. The following September the Webster County school was open to blacks.


The NorthStar's Week in Black History is compiled and written
by Frederick H. Lowe and Susan M. Miller.