Norman O. Houston was an American businessman and president of Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, which at one time was the largest black-owned business west of the Mississippi.

After graduating from high school, he attended the University of California, Berkeley for two years where he studied business administration.

He then worked for approximately a year as a clerk for the board of insurance underwriters in California, before returning to UC Berkeley.

Upon his discharge, he once again returned to UC Berkeley to attend summer school, but left the following fall to become an agent with the National Life Insurance Company in Los Angeles.

[2] In the early 1920s, when William Nickerson, Jr. arrived in Los Angeles to establish a branch of the Texas-based American Mutual Benefit Association, he needed someone with local contacts who had some knowledge of the insurance business.

[2] Louis M. Blodgett was the principal figure behind Liberty, who would later start Angelus Funeral Home in Los Angeles in 1925.

Houston worked there as a field manager with the difficult task of selling bonds to economically strapped African Americans.

[2] In 1925, when William Nickerson, Jr. decided to form Golden State Guarantee Fund Insurance Company in Los Angeles he convinced Houston to join him in the new venture.

[2] At this time it was very difficult for the approximately 40,000 blacks in California to obtain insurance from white-owned companies at reasonable rates.

Three years later, the company opened a new building on the corner of Adams Boulevard and Western Avenue in Los Angeles that was designed by prominent architect Paul Williams.

He also was briefly involved in the organization of the National Bank of Los Angeles in 1949, which was the brainchild of H. A. Howard, manager of Broadway Federal.