University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Law Faculty Publications School of Law 2009 Ending Jim Crow Life Insurance Rates Mary L. Heen University of Richmond,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/law-faculty-publications Part of the Civil Law Commons, Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Insurance Law Commons Recommended Citation Mary L. Heen, Ending Jim Crow Life Insurance Rates, 4 Nw. J. L. & Soc. Pol'y. 360 (2009). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Law Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Copyright 2009 by Mary Heen Volume 4 (Fall 2009) Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy Ending Jim Crow Life Insurance Rates Mary L. Heen* How people count and measure embodies certain assumptions about the thing they are counting; this was true in the nineteenth century, and it is equally true today.' [E]ver since the 1880's, Negroes have been subject to differential treatment by white insurance companies in that some of them, at that time, started to apply higher premium schedules for Negro than for white customers, whereas others decided not to take on any Negro business at all. The underlying reason, of course, is the fact that mortality rates are 2 much higher for Negroes than for whites. [I]f the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin..3 I.