Founder of NY’s largest Black-owned insurance provider dies at 98

Ernesta Procope, whose company called itself the first Black-owned insurance brokerage company on Wall Street, died on November 30 in her home in Queens. She was 98-years-old, according to the New York Times.

In 1953, the real estate maven founded E.G. Bowman INC, which is reportedly New York’s largest African American-owned provider of insurance brokerage services. The highly profitable business was birthed in the Bedford-Stuyvesant or Bed-Stuy neighborhood in Brooklyn.

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When the company was relocated to Wall Street in 1979, it made history again as the first and largest minority-owned insurance company in the financial district.

Dubbed “The First Lady of Wall Street,” by the Black Enterprise, Procope overcame many barriers to become one of the most influential women on Wall Street.

Born to West Indian immigrants in 1923, Procope began selling auto and home policies for small business and homeowners in the early 1950s.

Her company, located in Bed-Stuy at the time — a majority Black neighborhood that many insurers avoided due to racism — specifically fought to provide African Americans and other marginalized groups with access to insurance.

Source: Founder of NY’s largest Black-owned insurance provider dies at 98