African Baptist, Methodist, and other black churchmen established fraternal orders, lodges, and “voluntary associations” for racial uplift before and after the Civil War. Newport, Rhode Island blacks formed the African Union Society (1780). Their brethren in Philadelphia founded the Free African Society (1787), when lay leader Prince Hall chartered Boston's African Lodge No. 459 for Negro Masons. Grand United Order of Odd Fellows (1843) began in New York, as did Grand United Order of Galilean Fishermen (1856) and Knights of Pythias 1864) in Washington, DC, and Knights of Tabor (1872) in Independence, Missouri. All had women's auxiliaries, such as Daughters of the Eastern Star with Masons.

Fraternal groups helped communities. They fostered literacy and thrift, “the most far-reaching economic influence” among former slave patrons of the Freedmen's Bank. Orders and mutual benefit societies seeded the growth of fifty-five black banks ca. 1887–1908; they also founded insurance companies such as North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company (1898) and Atlanta Life Insurance Company (1905). They promoted “‘Negro support of Negro business.’”