Life

Chapter 1 focuses on the early history of race-based insurance. When the Newark-based Prudential Insurance Company of America incorporated in 1875, it revolutionized the American insurance industry by offering policies to the working class for an affordable three cents per week. What made the Prudential doubly unique was that the company insured not simply industrial laborers, but also African American laborers. The company was not in the progressive vanguard, though. Rather, the Northern upstart, in contrast to its Southern competitors, simply had not thought to craft a company policy to explicitly ban African Americans from purchasing life insurance. Just five years after becoming the first insurer to cover black lives, the Prudential began to charge differential, race-based premiums and commenced a public relations effort to defend its discriminatory practices. This foundational chapter traces how the theoretical work of scientific racism became embedded in the business practices of American insurers.