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.

[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.

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.

Wake County Superior Court placed the company in rehabilitation under control of the North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance.

He grew up in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, two cities near Durham, and he learned various skills such as bricklaying and barbering during his youth.

[11] Merrick knew that blacks had short life expectancies and that they generally had poor health, largely due to their low income.

Merrick decided that the opportunity to help blacks outweighed the risk, and he joined with investors Aaron Moore, William Gaston Pearson, Watson, Shepard, Johnson, and Dawkins to found the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Society in 1898.

Spaulding served on the board of trustees at Howard University beginning in 1936. he was active in the National Negro Insurance Association and the National Negro Bankers Association in the early 1900s and was one of few African American members of the New York Chamber of Commerce beginning in 1942.

Wake County Superior Court placed the company in rehabilitation under control of the North Carolina Commissioner of Insurance.