African American Fraternal Orders

Much of African American existence in the United States was characterized by legal and customary racial segregation. Denied access to economic avenues, Black citizens had no alternative other than to pool their resources and expertise to develop parallel structures within their own partially enclosed world. Equally, the institutions that they created also flowed from their cultural desires to construct their own identity. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the institutional structure of the African American community manifested itself in the church, mutual benefit organizations,