An African American barber and entrepreneur, Alonzo Herndon was founder and president of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company, one of the most successful Black-owned insurance businesses in the nation. At the time of his death in 1927, he was also Atlanta’s wealthiest Black citizen, owning more property than any other African American. Admired and respected by many, he was noted for his involvement in and support of local institutions and charities devoted to advancing African American business and community life. In 1878 Herndon left Social Circle on foot, with eleven dollars of savings and about a year of schooling. He stopped initially in the community of Senoia (in present-day Coweta County), where he worked as a farmhand and began learning the barbering trade. After a few months Herndon migrated to the town of Jonesboro, in Clayton County. There he opened his first barbershop. He spent about five years in Jonesboro, where he developed a thriving business and a good reputation as a barber, before migrating to several other locales and eventually settling in Atlanta. Arriving in early 1883, he secured employment as a barber in a shop on Marietta Street owned by William Dougherty Hutchins, an African American. After six months Herndon purchased half interest in the shop, entering into a partnership with one of the few free Blacks operating barbering establishments since before the Civil War.

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Clayton County gets its first black-owned gas station