Thomas Jefferson Huddleston Sr. (June 1, 1876 – October 1959) was a prominent African American entrepreneur and community leader in Mississippi.
[3] In 1924, Huddleston founded the Afro-American Sons and Daughters, a fraternal organization in Yazoo City, Mississippi.
[4] During the Great Depression, he loaned the Mississippi General Baptist Convention $50,000 to save it from bankruptcy.
It was founded in 1928 by the Afro-American Sons and Daughters, a black fraternal society, and provided a wide range of medical services.
The society, which eventually had 35,000 members, was led by Thomas J. Huddleston, a prosperous black entrepreneur and advocate of Booker T. Washington's self-help philosophy.
It ceased operation in 1966 as a fraternal entity after years of increasingly burdensome regulation, competitive pressure from government and third-party health care alternatives, and the migration of younger dues-paying blacks to the North."
Then for 50 cents a month dues, members of the organization qualified for any care the facility offered.
But now, a new Afro-American Sons and Daughters Hospital Association is trying to raise over a million and a half dollars to restore the old building and turn it into a museum, a day care facility and perhaps include an out-patient clinic.