83 One scholar of the period noted that “nothing has more greatly aided Negro agents in meeting the competition of their more experienced competitors than the abundance of examples of insults to and abuses of Negro policy holders at the hands of white agents which could nearly always be pointed out in every community.”84 After a white insurance agent participated in the lynching of a black man in Mississippi in the late 1800s, black customers flocked to black insurers. In a market based on mutual trust, white insurers for the most part failed to attract black customers.
