Alonzo Herndon

He Made His Opportunities

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Summer 1998]

Over the years, Issues & Views has published historical features that tell the stories of black men who began life with little more than their bootstraps. Such men recognized how much they could achieve even within the bounds of social restrictions. They pulled hard on those bootstraps, which were mainly nothing more than their own muscle and brain power, and lifted not only themselves but others with them.

Alonzo Herndon is an outstanding example of such a man. Like thousands of others who had been born in servitude and freed into poverty, he was neither demoralized nor too dispirited to reach for a better future. Born in 1858 on a Georgia plantation, Alonzo and his family were emancipated when he was seven years old. With hardly more than some bedding and a few cooking utensils, he, his mother Sophonie, grandparents and brother set out with their new freed status and uncertain prospects.

Their first housing was a small shack that they shared with other families. Sophonie hired herself out as a day worker, and his grandfather got a job pulling a cross-cut saw. Alonzo joined him in this work, and between the three family members, they managed to subsist.

When Alonzo was 13, the family’s former master offered him a job as a farmhand. Each day when his farm chores were done, Alonzo peddled peanuts, candies and other small items wherever he could. Throughout these hard years, he also managed to get some infrequent schooling and acquired about a year of formal education.

At 20, he set out to find better employment in Senoia, Georgia, where he again worked on a farm, but also found part-time work as a hair cutter. He learned the barbering trade so well that eventually he was able to rent his own space in a barbershop. Here, he managed to save enough money to move to Jonesboro, near Atlanta, where he opened his own small barbershop and managed to eke out an adequate living.

When offered a better-paying job by the black proprietor of a highly successful Atlanta barbershop, Herndon accepted. At Dougherty Hutchins’ shop, which catered to a wealthy, white clientele, Herndon honed his barbering skills and he became the most sought after barber in the shop. He was known for his competent, courteous service, and in less than a year, he and the owner became partners, and the shop’s name was changed to Hutchins & Herndon.

Three years later, in 1886, Herndon grabbed the opportunity to rent a shop of his own on one of Atlanta’s busiest downtown streets. Here he thought he would settle, but his exceptional reputation was spreading far and wide. One year later, he accepted rental space in the city’s prestigious Markham House Hotel. Beginning with just a few chairs in his shop, Herndon eventually expanded to 12 chairs and hired assisting barbers. The shop was a great success and Herndon thrived.

Instead of being satisfied, however, his entrepreneurial spirit yearned for still more challenges. During the 10 years that he ran the hotel barbershop, he diligently saved money with plans to fulfill his desire to open a unique kind of shop, with innovations best accomplished outside the confines of a hotel.

He was still contemplating his next move, when fate made the decision for him. In 1896, the beautiful Markham Hotel burned down, leaving Herndon to open a temporary shop, and search for better quarters. In 1902, at 66 Peachtree Street, he opened the shop of his dreams that was to become known as one of the most elegant establishments in Atlanta. Herndon had seen a need and positioned himself to fill it.

Here are some descriptions of this shop in African-American Business Leaders (Ingham & Feldman): "The shop measured 24 by 102 feet, had 25 chairs and 18 baths with tubs and showers. . . . Herndon outfitted it with crystal chandeliers, gilt-framed mirrors and fittings, massive front doors of solid mahogany, and beveled plate glass . . . . It was, according to the New York World, ‘known from Richmond all the way to Mobile as the best barbershop in the South.’" It was an unofficial city attraction, since tourists as well as local Atlantans came to stare at it in wonder.

The barbershop period was just the first part of Alonzo Herndon’s success story. During these good years, he had been investing in real estate. The barbering trade proved to be the perfect setting to pick up information from his upscale customers. Gradually he learned the ins and outs of the real estate market.

In Atlanta, he acquired over a hundred residential houses, along with a large commercial block of properties. By any measure, he was now a wealthy man. The Atlanta History Journal says of Herndon: "His life and work stated his politics. Black business was his personal strategy; black economic cooperation his hope for the community."

His wealth and the fame of his shop made him a prominent figure in the black community, and a much sought after bachelor. In 1893, he married a young woman from Atlanta’s old black elite--Adrienne Elizabeth McNeil. After graduating from Atlanta University, she was hired there as a faculty member, and taught elocution and drama. She was already making her mark in cultural circles when she married Alonzo, the self-taught farmhand turned barber turned financial mogul.

Since the latter 19th century, blacks had been forming church relief societies, benevolent associations and various types of fraternal groups (see Issues & Views, Fall 1996). These self-help institutions provided funds for home mortgages, death benefits and, in some cases, loans to capitalize small businesses. Many of these societies laid the foundation for the insurance companies that would be established by blacks in the future.

In 1905, Herndon was approached by two prominent black church pastors. One of them, Rev. Peter Bryant, had recently formed the Atlanta Benevolent & Protective Association, which was in dire need of capital. Herndon agreed to invest in the company and also helped Bryant reorganize it. The company was renamed Atlanta Mutual Insurance Association. Later, it would gain fame as Atlanta Life Insurance company. Herndon was named its first president.

Knowing nothing about the insurance business, he set about finding men who did. He lucked out when he recruited the experienced John Crew, who was given full responsibility for running the company. He and Herndon hired a staff and agents, and throughout the next year opened several branch offices in Georgia.

Through one acquisition and merger after another, Atlanta Life grew. The clients of small, failing companies, who were in jeopardy of losing their policies, were given reprieves when such companies were taken over by Atlanta Life. Confidence in the company and in Herndon’s ability and judgment grew. An editor of the Atlanta Independent newspaper, wrote, "When people buy a policy in Atlanta Life they are buying Alonzo Herndon." In 1918, the company moved to 132 Auburn, a legendary avenue that became the heart of Atlanta’s black business district.

Herndon was head of Atlanta Life for 22 years and expanded operations into six other southern states. The company’s only rival among black-owned insurance firms, in terms of income and profits, was the highly successful North Carolina Mutual in Durham. This was one of several well capitalized and efficiently managed institutions, that made Durham an important center of black enterprise (see Issues & Views, Winter 1993).

The 1920s were prosperous years for Atlanta Life, a prosperity that continued under the able leadership of Herndon’s only child, Norris, long after Alonzo’s death in 1927. The company, which is still in operation and is now housed in a complex of its new and old buildings, provided employment for hundreds of blacks.

In addition to constructing and developing office buildings in the 1920s, in 1915, Alonzo and Adrienne completed construction of their own mansion. Known today as the Herndon Home, it is an Atlanta landmark and is supported by a special foundation created by their son. Norris lived here until his death in 1947.

Still on a wall of a room in the Herndon Home is a painted mural that Alonzo always proudly displayed. It is a depiction of his mother and family, on the plantation, standing before their humble log cabin, in their tattered clothes, near that fateful moment when they set out on their journey with bedrolls, quilts and tin pots.

Copyright 1998 Issues & Views