THE HELIOS BIBLIOS HOUR : MOTHERDAY SPECIAL w SPECIAL GUESTS

This is the first night of the 150th anniversary celebration for the United Order of Tents, a secret society of black women. Annette Richter is the great-great-granddaughter of Annetta M. Lane, the enslaved woman who founded this order in 1867.The organization was a Christian benevolent association. During slavery and Reconstruction, black people founded organizations like this — some explicitly religious, some professional, some unaffiliated — to act as both social organizations and powerful places of safety under a hostile, predominantly white government. These organizations served as banks when most white-run institutions refused to trade or secure mortgages for black individuals or institutions.The DAR is structured into three Society levels: National Society, State Society, and Chapter. A State Society may be formed in any US State, the District of Columbia, or other countries that are home to at least one DAR Chapter. Chapters can be organized by a minimum of 12 members, or prospective members, who live in the same city or town.Most of what we know about the African American Mysteries, also known as the Order of the Men of Oppression, comes from an 1887 Detroit Tribune. founder, William Lambert. He was a successful Black business owner in Detroit and a tireless advocate for Black suffrage, abolitionist causes, and public education for Black children. As the co-founder of the Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit.more than 1500 freedom-seeking people escape their enslavers via the Underground Railroad. But the African American Mysteries was a far more secretive operation.Membership was organized into ranks with titles such as “chevalier of Ethiopia” and “knight of St. Domingo.” Lambert estimated the group’s membership at nearly 1 million free Black men and women, with 60,000 achieving its highest rank