Oral History Interview with Asa T. Spaulding, April 13, 1979. Interview C-0013-1. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007).
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Abstract
Asa T. Spaulding was born in rural North Carolina in 1902, but his scholastic aptitude soon removed him from the farm where he spent his childhood. After a high school education in Durham, North Carolina, Spaulding earned a degree from New York University and received training as an actuary at the University of Michigan. He returned to Durham to take a position at the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, a historically African-American company where he spent his career seeking balance in his professional and personal life. He was president of the company from 1959 until he retired in 1969. Spaulding spends most of this interview describing his early life. He describes his rural community; he remembers applying his disciplined mind to his studies in New York City and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he experienced some, but not much, racial discrimination; he recalls the transition from reliance on black burial associations to larger life insurance companies and his role in modernizing insurance practice; and he reflects on the nature of citizenship and humanity. Spaulding was a hard worker and a spiritual man who valued his time spent teaching the Bible. A self-reliant man, he cast his vote for Richard Nixon in 1972 but condemns him for his greed. This interview sheds light on a pioneering career and a set of beliefs behind a successful businessman and spiritually fulfilled person.
Researchers and students might also consult the two other interviews with Spaulding in this collection, C-0013-2 and C-0013-3. Those interested in learning more about the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company and black business in the South might turn to the interviewer's book, Black Business in the New South: A Social History of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.
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This interview is part of the Southern Oral History
Program Collection (#4007), a collection of over 4,000
interviews housed at the Southern Historical Collection.
Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection
Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews
Funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services supported the electronic publication of this title.
