The growth of black fraternal associations is closely intertwined with the larger history of voluntary associations in American society. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, compared to its European counterparts, the United States soon gained a reputation as “a nation of joiners.” As early as the 1830s, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville described the proliferation of voluntary associations as a hallmark of American democracy. In his view, such associations distinguished America from the more hierarchically organized societies of Western Europe. “The citizen of the United States,” Tocqueville (1947 [1835]: 109) declared, “is taught from his earliest infancy to rely upon his own exertions in order to resist the evils and the difficulties of life; he looks upon social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he only claims its assistance when he is quite unable to shift without it.” Near the turn of the twentieth century, a writer for the North American Review described the final decades of the nineteenth century as the “Golden Age of Fraternity” (Harwood 1897).

This article shows that the rituals of fraternal organizations were more than mere theatrics; that is, that they served as expressions and enactments of important ideas about individual and collective identity, gender, equality, and collective action. Responding to gaps in past work on this subject, we examine variation in master narratives and modes of ritual enactment, comparing male and female and white and African American groups from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The fraternal orders examined used elements of one of three ideal-typical ritual models to initiate their members: these models are referred to here as proprietorship, helpmateship, and pilgrimage. Following Clawson 1989, we find that men's groups of both races used ritual models focusing on autonomy and incorporation into hierarchy. Women's groups de-emphasized connections between members and focused instead on “traditional” Victorian norms and roles for women. African American groups—and particularly those without white counterparts—emphasized the equality of members as well as the importance of collective efforts for social improvement. We discuss the complex ways ideas about race and gender were articulated within civic organizations at the turn of the century and how these findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between culture and collective action.

In 1904, leaders of three major white fraternal orders launched a nationally coordinated legislative and legal campaign to force their black counterparts out of existence, a struggle that spread to atleast 29 states and culminated in victories for the African American groups before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1912 and 1929. The organizational structures of the black orders, usually consisting of a tripartite system of local, state, and national lodges, were critical in this successful defense of the legal right to form and operate fraternal organizations. These structures enabled fraternal members and leaders to turn local disputes into national ones, devise strategies based on the interplay of different levels of government, and sustain a discourse that facilitated internal mobilization and minimized external opposition. While most scholarship on resistance to Jim Crow has focused on local activism, the defense mounted by these orders facilitated the development of sophisticated, nationwide networks binding together local fraternal leaders and African American lawyers. These networks became a critical venue for the development of oppositional traditions, organizational infrastructures, and leadership ties that kept resistance alive under Jim Crow and laid the building blocks for future political and civil rights-related work. In particular, these fraternal lawyers, a number of whom went on to work for the NAACP, honed skills in these trials that were also central to the NAACP’s legal strategy, especially in learning to tailor cases to achieve federal hearings.

A prominent form of voluntary organization in the United States from the nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, fraternal associations are self-selecting brotherhoods and sisterhoods that provide mutual aid to members, enact group rituals, and engage in community service. Synthesizing primary and secondary evidence, this article documents that African Americans historically organized large numbers of translocal fraternal voluntary federations. Some black fraternal associations paralleled white groups, while others were distinctive to African Americans. In regions where blacks lived in significant numbers, African Americans often created more fraternal lodges per capita than whites; and women played a much more prominent role in African American fraternalism than they did in white fraternalism. Rivaling churches as community institutions, many black fraternal federations became active in struggles for equal civil rights.