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African American Fraternal Associations in American History: An Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Joe W. Trotter
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Extract

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).

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Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 28 , Issue 3: Special Issue: African American Fraternal Associations and the History of Civil Society in the United States , fall 2004 , pp. 355 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2004 

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