Draft:Central Life Insurance Company

Central Life Insurance should link here

Central Life Insurance Company was an insurance company founded in Tampa in 1922 by prominent African Americans including Mary McLeod Bethune, George S. Middleton, L. A. Howell, T. L. Lowrie, S. J. Johnson, C. H. Norton (a dentist), and W. D. Potter.

It loaned money to black owned businesses. Tampa's first high school for blacks, George Schroeder Middleton Senior High School, opened in the fall of 1934 at 4302 N. 24th Street in East Tampa and was named for mail carrier, company secretary, and one of its founders, George Schroeder Middleton. The company was shut down by the state in 1991. It had been struggling financially.

Is was established during the Jim Crow era of segregation and discrimination. In 1978 Edward D. Davis led it.