Merrick, John

Impact on the world

Built North Carolina Mutual from a struggling startup that nearly failed in its first year into the largest Black-owned business in the world, while also founding a real estate company, a bank, and a drug company that together helped earn Durham its reputation as the 'Capital of the Black Middle Class.'

Life & background

Born into slavery in Clinton, North Carolina, Merrick learned bricklaying and barbering as a young man before building a chain of five barbershops in Durham. After acquiring a fraternal insurance society in 1883 and learning the insurance business, he founded the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association in 1898 with backing from industrialist Washington Duke, working alongside Dr. Aaron McDuffie Moore and Moore's nephew Charles C. Spaulding, a leadership group known as 'The Triumvirate.' Despite a near-failure in its first year that drove away most other investors, the company grew under Merrick's presidency into the world's largest Black-owned business, and he went on to found the Merrick-Moore-Spaulding Real Estate Company, the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, and the Bull City Drug Company, channeling his wealth into Durham's Black community until his death in 1919.

Sources

1. John Merrick); NCpedia