Beside churches, slaves and free blacks formed protective associations and fraternal orders whose memberships paid dues to help provide needed “mutual aid for members and their families.”

Rising black freedom struggles in the South and gradual northern emancipation (1777–1846) paralleled the growth not only of separate Baptist, Methodist, and other congregations but also African schools and Free African Societies, the latter contributing sick and burial assistance even as they forged race literacy, economic cooperation, social progress, and liberty. Orders of Negro Masons (1787) and Oddfellows (1843) helped build national networks of support, as did women's United Order of Tents (1867). Societies buttressed African American business and commerce. Burial societies established funeral homes, cemeteries, banks, and real estate and insurance companies. North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, blacks’ largest black business before 1960, evolved from Richmond, Virginia's Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers (1881).