City Cleaners

We're spending Black History Month celebrating some of the trailblazing Black Americans who have played key roles in our industry. In 1953, Ernesta Procope founded E.G. Bowman Co., Inc. an insurance broker in Brooklyn, N.Y. She became known as the “The First Lady of Wall Street” after she relocated the business to Wall Street in 1979. That historic move made her insurance brokerage firm the first and largest Black-owned and woman-owned business on Wall Street. Her company grew to become the largest minority-owned insurance company in the United States and is still in business. E.G. Bowman Company, Inc. assembled a corporate client base that included American Express Co., Philip Morris Cos., Tiffany & Co., Avon Products Inc., and RJR Nabisco Inc. She recently died on November 30, 2021 at the age of ninety-eight.

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.” – Booker T. Washington. We commemorate all the influential men and women who help shape our country and culture.