What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality

by Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazos, Marshall Ganz

From the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries, millions of American men and women participated in fraternal associations--self-selecting brotherhoods and sisterhoods that provided aid to members, enacted group rituals, and engaged in community service. Even more than whites did, African Americans embraced this type of association; indeed, fraternal lodges rivaled churches as centers of black community life in cities, towns, and rural areas alike. Using an unprecedented variety of secondary and primary sources--including old documents, pictures, and ribbon-badges found in eBay auctions--this book tells the story of the most visible African American fraternal associations.


The authors demonstrate how African American fraternal groups played key roles in the struggle for civil rights and racial integration. Between the 1890s and the 1930s, white legislatures passed laws to outlaw the use of important fraternal names and symbols by blacks. But blacks successfully fought back. Employing lawyers who in some cases went on to work for the NAACP, black fraternalists took their cases all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually ruled in their favor. At the height of the modern Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, they marched on Washington and supported the lawsuits through lobbying and demonstrations that finally led to legal equality. This unique book reveals a little-known chapter in the story of civic democracy and racial equality in America.

-- "Publishers Weekly"

Genres: Sociology, History

312 pages, Hardcover

First published August 21, 2006

About the author

Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University and the Director of the Scholars Strategy Network. She is a past president of the American Political Science Association.

Reviews

[Tyler Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A (requested) birthday book from Josh. I wanted to read this book, expecting to garner information on Prince Hall. In the end, I learned that Prince Hall Masonry is only one column of a vast edifice of African American fraternalism, of which I was completely unaware and with which I found myself wonderfully interested.

This book is actually a collection of papers given by Skocpol and several others, edited to work together as a volume. The bulk of the work apparently belongs to Theda Skocpol, Ariane Liazos & Marshall Ganz, with the chapter on fraternal ritual attributed to two others. The Ritual chapter held some of the most potential for interest for me, but was a bit overburdened with anthropological abstractions & semiotic mess for my taste, with the second half letting up a bit and bringing it back home for me. The rest of the book is also academic in tone, but remains accessible and lively, without devolving into "speak" and constructs.

I would love to see this team do some of the same fact finding and collation with African American religious organizations, which I have a sneaky feeling would generously dovetail with their work on fraternal organizations.

This book delves into a little-examined aspect of African American social and political life and activity, and cracks open some nitty-gritty history and structure behind the Civil Rights movements of the 50s and 60s.

Recommended. You know who you are.