Business executive Charles Clinton Spaulding (1874-1952) was one of the most prominent and influential African American entrepreneurs of the 20th century, achieving success in both the banking and insurance professions. He was president of the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Company, the largest African American business in the country; a leading proponent of the Negro Business Movement of the period; and a civic and social leader in the tradition of Booker T. Washington.

Charles Clinton Spaulding, the third of fourteen children, was born on a farm near Whiteville in Columbus County, North Carolina, in 1874. His parents, Benjamin Mclver and Margaret Moore Spaulding, were prosperous landowners of free ancestry who were respected leaders of the community. Young Spaulding spent his early years working on the family farm and exhausting the limited possibilities for education in his rural community.

In the mid 1890s he made his way to Durham to join...