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Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, and Public Discourse in American Culture, 1865-1917 John D

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Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, and Public Discourse in American Culture, 1865-1917 John D University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2016 Initiating Race: Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, and Public Discourse in American Culture, 1865-1917 John D. Treat University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the African American Studies Commons, Cultural History Commons, History of Religion Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Treat, John D., "Initiating Race: Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, and Public Discourse in American Culture, 1865-1917" (2016). Theses and Dissertations. 1773. http://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/1773 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Initiating Race: Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, and Public Discourse in American Culture, 1865-1917 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by John D. Treat Lyon College Bachelor of Arts in Religion and Philosophy, 1991 Harvard University Master of Divinity, 1994 December 2016 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. __________________________________ Dr. Beth Barton Schweiger Dissertation Director __________________________________ __________________________________ Dr. Michael Pierce Dr. Calvin White, Jr. Committee Member Committee Member __________________________________ Dr. Patrick Williams Committee Member Abstract Drawing on ritual books, organizational records, newspaper accounts, and the data available from cemetery headstones and census records, this work argues that adult fraternal organizations were key to the formation of civic discourse in the United States from the years following the Civil War to World War I. It particularly analyzes the role of working-class white and African-American organizations in framing racial identity, arguing that white organizations gave up older, comprehensive ideas of citizenship for understandings of Americanism rooted in racism and nativism. Counterbalancing this development, now-forgotten African-American fraternal organizations were among the earliest advocates of Afrocentrism. These organizations, form a bridge of continuous intellectual and cultural development between the post-Civil War clashes of the first Ku Klux Klan and the African-American Union League and the World War I era emergence of the second Klan and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. While white organizations clung to a cultural and political vision rooted in the traditional, patriarchal family, African-American organizations showed a breadth of responses to modernity, including creating organizations that breeched the gendered public and domestic spheres and allowed women to exercise significant leadership in partnership with male co- fraternalists. ©2016 by John D. Treat All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements This project began on a trip with my dad to eat catfish at the One Stop in Georgetown in southeastern White County, Arkansas. On the outskirts of town, I noticed that the cemetery was full of headstones from the Woodmen of the World. I thought it had to mean something, though I was not sure what. This set me tromping through other cemeteries and, in the African-American portion of Kensett’s Crow Cemetery, I found the broken tombstone of Lizzie Walker with the inscription “333 – 777 International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters of Tabor, Bulah Tab. No. 366.” From finding that tombstone to finishing a dissertation on the role of fraternal organizations in framing American concepts of race, many people have lent a hand. The staff members of the Library of the Masonic Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, and Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library all provided invaluable help. Jeff Croteau of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library in Lexington, Massachusetts was incredibly generous with his time and introduced me to the world of fraternal regalia catalogs. The staff of Interlibrary Loan Services at the University of Arkansas’s Mullins Library regularly performed miracles. A number of mentors gave me valuable insights and kept me on track. Professors Elizabeth Markham and Rembrant Wolpert put me on the path of seeing fraternal ritual as an important medium for shaping members’ perceptions of the world beyond the lodge room. Dean Lynda Coon and Professor Joann D’Alisera gave me many of the theoretical tools I needed as well as permission to study weird stuff. Professors Michael Pierce and Patrick Williams gave me the opportunity to incorporate my historiographical research into their coursework and taught me a great deal about Arkansas sources and editing in my time as assistant editor of the Arkansas Historical Quarterly. Professor Calvin White made me keep my eye on the different meanings of class in African-American communities and encouraged me to remain open to where the sources led. Professor Beth Barton Schweiger gets her own page in a moment. Friends and family contributed a great deal to this project. Visits to my mother in Searcy, Arkansas frequently turned into drives in the country to scout cemeteries. Thanks to the internet, friends from my years in the Northeast remained a constant source of encouragement, particularly Tim Cravens, Paul Goings, Brian McCord, William Myers, John Plummer, and Tom Simota, who is actually just up the road. Finally, I owe an unrepayable debt to Jaime Dohrn, who encouraged me, fed me, put up with me, and loved me during this process, in addition to photographing a lot of manuscripts. Dedication To Beth Barton Schweiger, who brought me to and through the University of Arkansas. Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: The Historical Literature of Fraternalism ....................................................................12 Chapter 2: The Power of Fraternal Ritual ......................................................................................48 Chapter 3: White Fraternalism and Race .......................................................................................82 Chapter 4: African-American Fraternals and Race ......................................................................133 Chapter 5: Taborians in Kansas and Nebraska ............................................................................189 Chapter 6: Taborians, Gender, and Class in Arkansas.................................................................243 Chapter 7: The Universal Negro Improvement Association........................................................280 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................298 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................301 1 Introduction The history of rise and decline of American fraternalism from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I is integral to understanding the period’s political, social, and cultural history, though it has largely been overlooked by historians of Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, and the Progressive Era. For as many as thirty million Americans, including a disproportionate number of civic leaders and social agitators, the ritual vocabulary of fraternalism formed their discourse on individual and group identity and of citizenship.1 While a number of scholars have looked at middle-class white organizations or studied aspects of African-American fraternalism, no comprehensive study of this phenomenon exists. By examining working and lower-middle-class African-American and white organizations, this project shows that these groups were integral to the reformulation of racial identity during this fifty-year period and also contributed significantly to the debate on the limits of American citizenship. New ideas about the “scientific” basis of racism as well as counter arguments about the ancient contributions of Africa to world civilization would find ready venues in fraternal ritual. As the nineteenth century progressed into the twentieth, older republican and fraternal comprehensive ideals of citizenship and appeals to the bond created by the dignity of labor gave way to an increasingly racialized and militaristic rhetoric that crystallized in the second Ku Klux 1The thirty million figure is an approximation and an indication of how little is known of the scope of fraternalism. While reliable membership figures exist for Freemasons only from 1924, information is scarce or, in the case of most African-American and working-class institution, entirely unavailable beyond the groups’ own statements. The common practice of belonging to multiple organizations further clouds the picture. See, Craig Heimbichner and Adam Parfrey, Ritual America: Secret Brotherhoods and Their Influence on American Society: A Visual Guide (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2012), 1-21. 2 Klan and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Rather than being sudden reactionary
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