A notable pioneer of the life insurance industry in Africa, Robert Turner Freeman, Jr. was born on April 25, 1918 in New York City and graduated from Lincoln University in 1941. In 1945 he entered the life insurance industry as the vice-president...
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A notable pioneer of the life insurance industry in Africa, Robert Turner Freeman, Jr. was born on April 25, 1918 in New York City and graduated from Lincoln University in 1941. In 1945 he entered the life insurance industry as the vice-president and actuary for United Mutual Life Insurance, an African-American insurance company. Eleven years later he and two lawyer friends, Vertner W. Tandy, Jr. and David Jones, established the Gold Coast (later Ghana) Insurance Company. The Gold Coast Insurance Company recruited twenty-five insurance agents - the first in the colony - and gave them a two-week training course. By 1959, the company was 150 - strong and branch offices had been opened in other major Ghanaian cities. That same year, Freeman and Tandy also formed the Ghana General Insurance Company to sell automobile and fire insurance. It was the first domestic property and casualty company in Ghana. In 1962, the two flourishing companies were incorporated into Ghana's newly-formed State Insurance Corporation under Freeman's leadership. Freeman and his partner's innovative efforts in life insurance in Ghana drew interest from other African nations and Freeman's insurance career in Africa would include actuarial and legal consultation for insurance corporations in Liberia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa among others. Freeman died on January 10, 2001 in Washington, D.C. The Robert Freeman Papers document Freeman's career as a pioneer of the life insurance industry in Ghana, and to some degree Nigeria. The papers are divided into Personal and Professional papers. The latter consist mainly of business correspondence with some financial documents pertaining especially to the Ghana Insurance, Ghana General Insurance, and Great Nigeria Insurance companies. The scanty personal record includes a few letters to family and associates, curriculum vitae, a biographical sketch, a file on Pauli Murray and clippings about Kwame Nkrumah. The folder on Murray contains a travelogue of her experiences in Ghana and other countries, a letter reflecting on non-violence and women's liberation among other things, and an unpublished paper "The Law as it Affects Desegregation.".
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