Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company

Founding

In the mid-1920s, when William Nickerson Jr., an insurance salesman and publisher from Texas, arrived in Los Angeles, he was alarmed to discover that most of the 16,000 blacks living in the city were unable to obtain life insurance. Unable to afford an attorney, Nickerson studied law to determine the state's requirements to form a corporation to accommodate this need. He partnered with fellow insurance salesman Norman O. Houston and businessman George A. Beavers Jr. to secure 500 pre-paid life insurance applications as well as the $15,000 deposit required by California. Houston raised the $15,000 and Beavers found 500 blacks that would pay premiums for a company that was yet to be established.

On July 23, 1925, they opened as the Golden State Guarantee Fund Insurance Company in a one-room office at 1435 Central Avenue, Los Angeles, with few amenities and $17,800 in capital. Within three months the company had outgrown its office and moved to a storeroom at 3512 Central Avenue. By the end of its first year the company had established an office in Oakland, California, which sold more than $260,000 in policies, and had $6,000 in reserves and a surplus of over $16,000. Within three years, Golden State Insurance had over 100 employees including sixty agents as well as branches in Pasadena, Bakersfield, San Diego and Fresno.

Early years

In 1928, using all African American design and labor, they built the two-story Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building at 4261 Central Avenue where the firm occupied the top floor while the main floor was rented to merchants. The company remained profitable throughout the Great Depression in the 1930s. The company began paying out dividends beginning in 1930 and continued to do until it entered into its terminal decline. The name was changed to Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1931, and by the end of the 1930s, assets had grown up to $437,000 with $6 million in policies. In 1938 they set up operations in Illinois and in 1944 they opened a branch in Texas. By the end of World War II assets stood at $2 million, surplus funds at $750,000, and they had nearly $24 million in policies.