Charles Clinton Spaulding was born on 1 August 1874 on a farm near Whiteville in Columbus County, North Carolina, the third of fourteen children. He grew up working the family farm and at 20 left for Durham, where in 1898 he finished the equivalent of a high school education and took a job managing a Black-owned cooperative grocery store.
The grocery collapsed in 1899, leaving him $300 in debt, but that same year he was hired by the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association, an insurance society founded in 1898 by seven Black entrepreneurs including his uncle Aaron Moore and John Merrick. By 1900 it was close to failure when Spaulding became its general manager, the company's only full-time position, and began recruiting agents among Black teachers and ministers.
Under his management the company grew steadily. It became a legal reserve life insurer in 1909, took the name North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1919, and following Moore's death in 1923 Spaulding became its president, a post he held until his death. He also led an extended family of businesses including the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, the Mutual Building and Loan Association and the Bankers Fire Insurance Company.
By the mid-1920s the cluster of Black-owned enterprises around North Carolina Mutual had made Durham known as the Black Wall Street and the capital of the Black middle class, and Spaulding was known nationally as 'Mr. Negro Business'. He reorganised the company in the early 1930s to keep it alive through the Great Depression, and it operated in thirteen states and the District of Columbia.
Spaulding was also a leader well beyond business. He served as a trustee of Howard University, Shaw University and North Carolina College, headed the Urban League's National Emergency Advisory Council, and received the Harmon Foundation Award for Achievement in Business in 1926. He died on 1 August 1952, and by then North Carolina Mutual was the largest Black-owned business in the United States, with assets of over $40 million.
- President of North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, 1923–1952
- Built it into the largest Black-owned business in the United States
- President of the Mechanics and Farmers Bank
- Helped make Durham the 'Black Wall Street'
- Trustee of Howard University, Shaw University and North Carolina College
- A struggling institution can become a landmark. Spaulding took over a company on the brink of failure and led it for over fifty years to become the largest Black-owned business in the country.
- Success multiplies when it supports others. North Carolina Mutual advertised and funded Black schools, churches and businesses, helping build an entire community economy.