Headed by Black founding fathers Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, the Free African Society was founded on April 12, 1787, as a nondenominational mutual aid society and the first dedicated to serving Philadelphia’s burgeoning free Black community. Members contributed one shilling per month to fund programs to support their social and economic needs.

The Free African Society emerged from discussions among Allen, Jones, and other men in early 1786, when Allen was leading prayer meetings and early-morning services for Black congregants of St. George’s Methodist Church. Concerned that the majority of Philadelphia’s Black community was illiterate and did not go to church, these men decided to form a nondenominational, religious society to promote religion and literacy, as well as assisting members’ families to help cover the costs of burial after a member’s death.

To join the Free African Society, prospective members agreed to pay the monthly dues and to abide by moral requirements to be temperate and refuse to engage in disorderly behavior. Members of any religious denomination could join, but anyone who behaved in disorderly ways, abused alcohol, or did not pay their dues faced expulsion. By demanding that members abstain from feasts, drinking, and gambling, the society’s officers sought to combat beliefs that Black people were lazy, disorderly, or frivolous—claims often deployed as a justification for enslavement. They also argued that indulgence in the “sins” of drinking, gambling, or idleness showed a lack of respect for Black people still enslaved.

Members in good standing could expect a number of benefits from the mutual aid fund. Particularly in the first years of the society, important aspects of support for members included payments for burials and financial aid for widows and other family members of the deceased, finding apprenticeships for children to learn a trade, and paying tuition for members’ children if places in free schools were not available. Over time, the society expanded to care for the social and economic well-being of its members by providing moral guidance, by helping newcomers to the city feel welcome, and by giving assistance during periods of financial difficulty brought on by unemployment or sickness. The society also took on the task of assisting the sick during the yellow fever epidemic in 1793.

Though the Free African Society was not particularly long-lived, it spurred the creation of many similar African American mutual aid societies, more than one hundred in the Philadelphia region by 1838. The society’s mission of community building and assisting one another also contributed to the self-sufficiency of Philadelphia’s growing free Black community.

Adapted from the new book Greater Philadelphia and the Nation, Vol. 2, A New History for the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press): “Free African Society,” by Elise Kammerer.