Charles Allen Rawls
39 S. Jackson Ave.

In 1933, Charles Allen Rawls established the Rawls Funeral Home, one of just a few African American owned businesses at the time in Brownsville. In the 1950s, he founded the Mutual Benefit Burial Association that assisted impoverished families throughout West Tennessee in burying their family members by paying a small monthly premium. Springing from the Mutual Benefit Burial Association was the Sons and Daughters of the Golden Circle, later organized as the Golden Circle Life Insurance Company, a stock life insurance company that allowed many families that were in danger of losing their homes or farms secure loans to pay the mortgage during hard economic times. The company has been headquartered in the same building for fifty-one years and today is owned and managed by Andrea Bond Johnson, granddaughter of Charles Allen Rawls.  His grandson, William, became the first African American mayor of Brownsville in 2014.

Dunbar-Carver Residential District