John Wesley Dobbs
John Wesley Dobbs was an African American civic and political leader in Atlanta, Georgia. He was often referred to as the unofficial “mayor” of Auburn Avenue, the spine of the Black community in the city. Dobbs co-founded the Atlanta Negro Voters League with civil rights attorney A.T. Walden, leading voter registration efforts that registered 20,000 African Americans in Atlanta from 1936-1946. This new political power helped gain the hiring in 1948 of the first eight African American police officers in Atlanta, the same year that the federal government began to integrate the armed services. In 1949 the city finally installed lighting along Auburn Avenue, the main retail street of the African American community.
Dobbs married Irene Ophelia Thompson in 1906. They had six daughters together, all of whom graduated from Spelman College.
Dr. Irene “Renie” Dobbs Jackson
Dr. Irene “Renie” Dobbs Jackson, the eldest daughter, is the mother of the first African American mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson Jr. (1938-2003). She was the first African American to obtain a library card from the Atlanta Public Library. She graduated as valedictorian from Spelman College (1925) and earned her master’s and doctorate degrees (1956) in French from the University of Grenoble and the University of Toulouse in France, respectively. She also served as the head of the French department at Spelman College and as a chair of the Modern Languages department of North Carolina Central University in Durham, North Carolina.
She married Maynard Jackson Sr., and the couple had six children: Jeanne, Alexandra, Maynard Jr., Carol, Constance and Paul.
Willie Dobbs Blackburn
Willie Dobbs Blackburn, the second born, graduated at the top of her class from Spelman College (1931) and received her master’s degree from Atlanta University (1934). She moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where she served as chairman of the language division of Jackson State University. The Willie Dobbs Blackburn Language Arts Building on Jackson State University’s campus is named in her honor.
She married Benjamin Blackburn, and the couple had two children: Juliette and Benjamin Blackburn.
Millicent Dobbs Jordan
Millicent Dobbs Jordan, the middle daughter, was a college professor especially interested in Africa, African American history and African art. During her lifetime, she made frequent trips to the continent of Africa. She received her bachelor’s degree from Spelman College (1933) and her master’s degree in speech and drama from Columbia University (1938). She returned to Spelman College to teach English and African American literature. She also taught at Georgia State University, Arkansas State University and Morris Brown College.
She married dentist Dr. Robert H. Jordan and had three children: Robert and twin boys James and Dobbs.
Josephine Dobbs Clement
Josephine Dobbs Clement, the fourth born, was a community advocate and civil rights leader focused on the political and social justice movements of Durham, North Carolina. She graduated from Spelman College in 1937 and received her master’s degree from Columbia University the following year. After moving to Durham in the late 1940s, Clement was actively involved in desegregating the YWCA and the League of Women’s Voters. She was appointed to the Durham City-County Charter Commission and also chaired the city’s board of education. She was also a member of the city-county library board in Durham, a director of Durham’s Better Health Foundation and a volunteer worker at the Durham Children’s House. The Josephine Dobbs Clement Early College High School in Durham was named in her honor.
She married North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company executive William A. Clement, and the couple had five children: William Jr., Wesley, Arthur, Kathleen and Jody.
Mattiwilda “Geekie” Dobbs Janzon
Mattiwilda “Geekie” Dobbs Janzon, the fifth born, is an internationally known concert performer and one of the first African Americans to sing at the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York. She received her bachelor’s degree in music and Spanish from Spelman College (1946), where she graduated first in her class. She moved to New York and pursued vocal lessons with German soprano Lottie Leonard while studying Spanish at Columbia University, where she ultimately earned her master’s degree (1948). She vowed never to sing to a segregated audience and performed many major festivals and opera houses throughout Europe and the United States. Upon retiring from the stage in 1974, she taught at the University of Texas, Spelman College and Howard University in Washington, D.C.
Her first husband, playwright and journalist Luis Rodriguez died shortly after their marriage. She later married Swedish journalist Bengt Janzon.
Dr. June Dobbs Butts
Dr. June Dobbs Butts, the youngest daughter, is one of the first African American sexologists. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Spelman College (1948) and her master’s degree in counseling (1950) and a doctorate in family life education from Columbia University. She taught in the psychology department at Fisk University, Tennessee State University and Meharry Medical College. She also worked for the Masters and Johnson Institute, a clinical and research foundation that studied human sexuality. She has authored many books and articles on sex, teenage pregnancy and AIDS and worked at the CDC.
She married and later divorced psychiatrist Dr. Hugh Butts. The couple had three children: Lucia, Florence and Eric.
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William Clement Sr.
William A. Clement was born on May 6, 1912, in Charleston, South Carolina, the son of Arthur John and Sadie Jones Clement, both of whom were employed by North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. William A. Clement worked part time as an agent for North Carolina Mutual, beginning in 1928, while he was a student at the Avery Institute in Charleston.
William A. Clement graduated from Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama, in 1934, with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. He joined the staff of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1934, working first as an agent in the Memphis district; then as assistant manager, Charleston district, 1935-1940, then as agency supervisor, 1940-1944, and regional director, 1944-1946, in the regional office in Atlanta. In 1946, Clement moved to Durham, North Carolina, where he served as assistant to the agency director and eventually made his way to executive vice-president from 1976-1978.
Clement became a chartered life underwriter in 1953 and was active in numerous life insurance associations, including serving on the boards of directors of the American College of Life Underwriters (later American College), the Life Insurance Agency Management Association (LIAMA), and the Life Insurance Marketing Research Association (LIMRA), and as president and secretary of the National Insurance Association (NIA).
After his retirement from North Carolina Mutual, Clement formed William A. Clement and Associates, which provided financial management and marketing services with a particular focus on minority clients. Clement also served as president of the Security Investment Company of Durham, North Carolina, a private investment association with a portfolio of real estate and securities holdings.
Clement was also active in civic affairs, serving as chair of the Raleigh-Durham Airport Authority, president of the Durham District and vice chair of the Occoneechee Council of the Boys Scouts of America, president of the United Fund of Durham and Durham County, treasurer of Penn Community Services of South Carolina, president of the Talladega College Alumni Association, chair of the committee on education of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People and Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons Grand Lodge of North Carolina. He served as a trustee or director of the Durham Chamber of Commerce, Durham Development Corporation, White Rock Baptist Church, Durham Academy, the Madeira School and the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center. Clement was a member of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, the Durham Rotary Club, the Governor’s Business Council on Arts and the Humanities, the Mayor’s Advisory Board for the Revitalization of Downtown Durham, the Foundation for Better Health Care of Durham, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity.
For his many services, Clement was awarded the Silver Beaver by the Boy Scouts, 1966, the Crosthwaite Award of the Chicago Insurance Association, 1977, the father of the year award from the Durham Merchants Association, 1968 and an honorary doctorate from North Carolina Central University, 1981. He and Josephine Clement were honorees at the Durham NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in 1980.
Clement married Frances Lawson of Sumter, South Carolina, in September 1935 and had one daughter Alexine, born June 1936. Frances Lawson Clement died of cancer in December 1940. On December 24, 1941, Clement married Josephine Dobbs, daughter of John Wesley Dobbs of Atlanta, Georgia. They had five children: William A., Wesley Dobbs, Arthur John, Kathleen Ophelia and Josephine Millicent (Jody).
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William Clement Jr.
Entrepreneur and corporate chief executive William Alexander Clement Jr. was born on January 22, 1943, in Atlanta, Georgia, to politician Josephine Dobbs Clement and Executive Vice President for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company William Alexander Clement Sr. Clement received his bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College in 1964, majoring in mathematics and business administration, and his M.B.A. degree in finance and insurance from Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967.
Clement worked as a credit analyst for NCNB Corporation (predecessor to Bank of America) in Charlotte, North Carolina, as a registered representative for Bache & Company as well as a representative for The Robinson-Humphrey Company prior to becoming vice president and senior loan officer of Citizens Trust Bank in 1973. In 1977, Clement was a political appointee in the Carter Administration and served as an associate administrator of the United States Small Business Administration. While in this position, he served as senior management officer for the federal government’s largest minority business development program. Clement also received a presidential appointment by President Jimmy Carter to join the board of directors of the National Consumer Cooperative Bank in Washington, D.C. In addition, he was the founder and former chairman and chief executive officer of DOBBS, RAM & Company, a systems integration company. Founded in 1981, DOBBS, RAM & Company was engaged by the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to maintain its E-Filing System.
Clement became an outside director of Atlanta Life Insurance Company in 1992, and in 2001, the board of directors named him chairman. In 2008, Clement was elected president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta Life Financial Group, Inc., and he worked in this position for three years. He also served on the boards of two publicly-traded companies, Radiant Systems, Inc. and TRX, Inc.
Clement has been active in numerous civic and community organizations. He was the former chair of the board of Opportunity Funding Corporation, a trustee of the Maynard Jackson Youth Foundation, and a former trustee of the Woodruff Arts Center. He served on the board of directors of The Commerce Club and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Clement was also a charter member of the 100 Black Men of Atlanta, a former co-chair of the Atlanta Action Forum and a former chair of the Atlanta Business League. He has served as a member of the trustee board ministry of Antioch Baptist Church, as co-grantor of the Brown-Clement Endowed Scholarship Fund at Morehouse College, and a member of the Society of International Business Fellows.
Clement is married to R. Ressie Guy-Clement and is the father of two daughters and the grandfather of two grandchildren.
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John Merrick
John Merrick, born into slavery in 1859, had become, by the late 1890s, was a business success in Durham. Owner of half a dozen barbershops and a real estate business, Merrick was also a member of the Grand United Order of True Reformers, a mutual benefit society organized in Richmond in 1881 that expanded into insurance and banking.
In 1898 Merrick brought together six of Durham’s leading Black business and professional men and organized North Carolina Mutual. “The Company with a Soul and a Service” survived the hardship of its first years to achieve success and help make Durham’s reputation as a center of African American economic life. The first month’s collections, after the payment of commissions, amounted only to $1.12. The business increased to a quarter of a million dollars in 1910. The company specialized in “industrial insurance,” which was basically burial insurance. The company hired salesmen whose main job was to collect small payments (of about 10 cents) to cover the insured person for the next week. If the person died while insured, the company immediately paid benefits of about 100 dollars. This covered the cost of a suitable funeral, which was a high prestige item in the Black community. It began operations in the new tobacco manufacturing city of Durham, North Carolina, and moved north into Virginia and Maryland, then to major northern Black urban centers, and then to the rest of the urban South.
For much of the 20th century, it was the largest company run by African Americans, and it is the largest and oldest African American life insurance company in the United States to this day. In fact, the company came to be known as the world’s largest African American business in only its first few years and is claimed by its home city of Durham as an important landmark. In the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s, Durham was known as “The Black Wall Street of America.”
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R. Donahue Peebles
R. Donahue Peebles made history in 2002 when his real estate firm completed the development of Miami Beach’s Royal Palm Resort, the nation’s first Black-owned luxury resort. Two years later, he sold the property for a record $127.5 million.
Don Peebles had it all planned out. He was going to major in pre-med at Rutgers University, move on to medical school and become a doctor to establish some financial security. Then he’d use his income to invest in real estate and get really rich. He even had a role model in his uncle in New Jersey, who had done the same and lived a very comfortable life. But as a 19-year-old college sophomore, he had an epiphany: Why not just cut out the first step?
He set a goal to become a multimillionaire by the time he would have graduated from medical school at 26 years old. He got there.
Peebles, now the founder, chairman, and CEO of New York-based Peebles Corp., is one of the wealthiest African American real estate developers in the United States, with Forbes estimating his net worth in excess of $700M. But the longtime D.C. power player is now stepping into a brighter spotlight with his largest project yet in a land where many come to make it big: Los Angeles.
Peebles, 59, recently visited the location of that project, Angels Landing in Downtown Los Angeles, set to debut in 2024. The $1.6B residential, hotel and retail complex that sits on a vacant parcel on Bunker Hill will feature an 80-story skyscraper, making it one of the tallest buildings in the Western United States. The plan is to build a vertical community to tie together one of the more disjointed areas of L.A.’s bustling core.
In response to the lack of gender and racial diversity in the real estate development business and the increasing shortage of affordable housing, Peebles is starting a fund to invest in developers of affordable housing to help address the crisis in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Peebles says supporting emerging, early-career developers who are building midsize complexes with units not marketed toward out-of-town investors but working locals can help boost available supply. He is starting a fund focused on urban infill and workforce housing. The fund will invest in projects mostly in the $20M to $50M range. He’s setting a goal for the fund to do 60 deals, with 10 of those in California, and he’s encouraged by the reception he’s getting.
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