One of the nation’s largest collections of African American papers has been acquired by Augusta State University. The papers from the Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company, the first insurance provider for African Americans in Georgia, will eventually be housed in the special collection archives in the Reese Library.
“This is a major collection in African American business history. It also documents the civic and charitable activities of the company and its employees,” says Lee Ann Caldwell, director of the Center for the Study of Georgia History at Augusta State.
Local business owner Delores Crawford deeded the papers as a gift to the university. She acquired the collection when she purchased the building housing the records. Ms. Crawford contacted Dr. Caldwell to see if ASU would be interested in the papers.
Dr. Caldwell, along with members of the Reese Library—Camilla Reid, Carol Waggoner-Angleton, and Owen Angleton—recently gathered at the building with the company that will conduct the cleaning and preservation of the papers, to pack up all of the records that will be later housed in the library.
According to Ms. Waggoner-Angleton, the cleaning and preservation stage will be a time-consuming one, due to the quantity of records collected. “We literally filled up a 53-ft.,18-wheeler front to back,” she says, adding, “It would not be unusual for this to be a five to ten year process.” Ms. Waggoner-Angleton is currently in the process of writing grants in hopes of obtaining funding for this major project.
Dr. Caldwell says that the university has funding to store the materials in a climate-controlled environment provided by the document reclamation company through May 2010. “This collection will make our archives more regionally significant. We should be able to draw scholars from many parts of the country,” says Dr. Caldwell.
Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Company was an African American-owned and -operated company founded in Augusta in 1898 by Solomon W. Walker, Thomas Walker, Walter Hornsby, and James C. Collier. It became one of the largest employers of African Americans in the city and issued tens of thousands of policies in the first decades of the twentieth century, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia. It expanded into several surrounding states, both providing more jobs and serving the insurance needs of African Americans in many areas of the South,
The late Joseph D. Greene, former ASU professor and Customer Service Champion, began his career at the company and served as its executive vice president/ chief marketing officer.
Nov 30, 2009
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