The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or complete abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emphasize alcohol's negative effects on people's health, personalities and family lives. Typically the movement promotes alcohol education and it also demands the passage of new laws against the sale of alcohol, either regulations on the availability of alcohol, or the complete prohibition of it.
The International Organisation of Good Templars, whose international body is known as Movendi International, is a fraternal organization which is part of the temperance movement, promoting abstinence from alcohol and other drugs.
Maggie Lena Walker was an American businesswoman and teacher. In 1903, Walker became both the first African American woman to charter a bank and the first African American woman to serve as a bank president. As a leader, Walker achieved successes with the vision to make tangible improvements in the way of life for African Americans. Disabled by paralysis and a wheelchair user later in life, Walker also paved the way for people with disabilities.
The Sons of Temperance was and is a brotherhood of men who promoted the temperance movement and mutual support. The organization was started in New York City in 1842.
David M. Fahey was a history professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. After his retirement in 2006, he continued to teach modern British and world history at Miami on a part-time basis.
Woodland Cemetery is a historically African American cemetery in Northeast Richmond, Virginia located directly east of the Highland Park neighborhood. Opening in 1916, it was built as a resting place for the Black elite of Richmond. Woodland was laid out in the shape of an arrowhead pointing north to symbolize the way enslaved blacks once looked north to freedom.
The True Reformer Building is an historic building constructed for the Grand United Order of True Reformers, an African American organization founded by William Washington Browne. The building is at 1200 U Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. in the U Street Corridor (Cardozo/Shaw) neighborhood. It was designed by John Anderson Lankford. The building was commissioned by the Grand United Order of True Reformers in 1902. It was dedicated on July 15, 1903.
Rev. William Washington Browne was an African American fraternal society leader, temperance worker, and minister. He was the founder and head of the Grand United Order of True Reformers and the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers, a benevolent, temperance, and fraternal society for African Americans that was based in Richmond, Virginia.
The Golden Age of Fraternalism is a term referring to a period when membership in the fraternal societies in the United States grew at a very rapid pace in the latter third of the 19th century and continuing into the first part of the 20th. At its peak, it was suggested that as much as 40% of the adult male population held membership in at least one fraternal order.
John Henry Smythe or Smyth was an American diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Liberia from 1878 to 1881 and from 1882 to 1885. Before his appointment, he had various clerkships in the federal government in Washington, DC, and in Wilmington, North Carolina. Later in his life he took part in a number of leading African American organizations and was president of a Reformatory School outside of Richmond, Virginia.
The Mosaic Templars of America was a black fraternal order founded by John E. Bush and Chester W. Keatts, two former slaves, in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1883. The organization originally provided illness, death, and burial insurance during an era when few basic services were available to black people.
Mary Elizabeth Cary Burrell was an American educator and businessperson. She is known for being a school teacher and for working for causes like women's suffrage.
William Nauns Ricks was an American poet who lived and worked primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area. He published hundreds of poems, mainly in the popular press, and one collection.
Jessie Forsyth was a British-American temperance advocate. She joined the International Organisation of Good Templars (IOGT) in London in 1872, relocated to New England for decades, and celebrated her Jubilee while residing in Western Australia. During her 50 years membership, Forsyth filled many important offices, including 15 years as International Superintendent of Juvenile Templars, in the course of which she visited jurisdictions in Great Britain, the United States and Canada and many parts of continental Europe. She edited the International Good Templar Magazine for eight years and, at different times, did the editorial work on seven other temperance publications, in addition to being a contributor of short stories and poems to newspapers and magazines. She made addresses in various countries before large audiences, including one in the Royal Opera House, Stockholm, and did much secretarial work. The last years of her life were chiefly devoted to work for the WCTU until she was compelled to resign active service on account of ill health.
The Independent Order of St. Luke was an African American fraternal order founded to promote Black economic independence. It was founded after the Civil War (1861–1865) in Baltimore, Maryland by Mary Ann Prout. It was first called the United Order of St. Luke.
Giles Beecher Jackson (1853–1924) was an American lawyer, newspaper publisher, entrepreneur, and civil rights activist. He was the first African-American to practice law before the Supreme Court of Virginia in 1887. Jackson co-authored The Industrial History of the Negro Race in Virginia.
The Knights of Pythias of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, also known as the Colored Knights of Pythias or the Knights of Pythias, is a fraternal organization in the United States. The Knights of Pythias, founded in 1864, did not allow African Americans so this group formed on its own. The organization was established in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1880 by Thomas W. Stringer and others.
Eliza Allen was an African American banker, activist, and clubwoman. She was a founder of the True Reformers Savings Bank, the first African-American-owned bank to be chartered in the United States. She was affiliated with several African American economic self-help organizations. Before the Civil War, she formed three societies to help enslaved women.
