Jacksonville’s Abraham Lincoln Lewis was Florida’s first black millionaire after his founding of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company here. The company was founded to provide affordable life and burial insurance to the black community.
As well as being a leading contributor to black colleges like Edward Waters University and Bethune-Cookman University, Lewis also founded American Beach in Nassau County, which was a thriving vacation spot for African-Americans in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. After his passing in 1947, Lewis was buried in Memorial Cemetery in Northwest Jacksonville, where a historic marker tells more about his life of entrepreneurism, philanthropy, and pioneering for human rights.