North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company

NC Mutual (originally the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association and later North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company)^[2][3] was an American life insurance company located in downtown Durham, North Carolina and one of the most influential African-American businesses in United States history. Founded in 1898 by local black social leaders, its business increased from less than a thousand dollars in income in 1899 to a quarter of a million dollars in 1910.^[4] The company specialized in "industrial insurance," which was basically burial insurance. The company hired salesmen whose main job was to collect small payments (of about 10 cents) to cover the insured person for the next week. If the person died while insured, the company immediately paid benefits of about 100 dollars. This covered the cost of a suitable funeral, which was a high prestige item in the black community.^[5] It began operations in the new tobacco manufacturing city of Durham, North Carolina, and moved north into Virginia and Maryland, then to major northern black urban centers, and then to the rest of the urban South.

For much of the 20th century it was the largest company run by African Americans.^[6]

The company came to be known as the world's largest African American business in only its first few years and is claimed by its home city of Durham as an important landmark. In the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s, Durham was known as "The Black Wall Street of America."^[7] for the progress that African Americans were making within the town. The company's founders, thought to be inspired by North Carolina business tycoon Washington Duke, included John Merrick and Aaron McDuffie Moore, two particularly influential men in Durham's history. North Carolina Mutual and its prosperity brought many good things to Durham's black community, and its founders and organizers were important contributors to social and economic progress in the city and particularly in its African American community.

In 2019, NC Mutual encountered financial difficulty that arose from a reinsurance transaction in which the assets securing the transaction were misappropriated by an investment manager. Wake County Superior Court placed the company in rehabilitation under control of the North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance. On October 11, 2022, a court approved the liquidation of NC Mutual effective October 31, 2022.