River City Bank
About this tag
“Alberta’s Louisville” is the Hometown Heroes banner honoring attorney and civil-rights activist Alberta O. Jones. She was the first Black woman to pass the Kentucky bar, Kentucky’s first female prosecutor, and Muhammad Ali’s first attorney. The banner has hung here since 2017, on a building with another layer of Black Louisville history. River City Bank is the name on the building now, but the interesting part is underneath. This was the home of Mammoth Life and Accident Insurance Company, once one of Kentucky’s largest Black-owned businesses and a major presence on old Walnut Street. The six-story building was designed by Joseph & Joseph, and part of it also housed the Lyric Theatre. A later facade covered much of the original brick and stone exterior, so the Mammoth Life building is still in there, hiding in plain sight.