Founded in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society is the oldest all-male Funeral Society in Charleston, South Carolina. It also provides a major historical example of how racism affected the African American community itself, in that lighter-skinned African Americans in the Society considered themselves superior to darker skinned African Americans. Although still considered inferior by the white population, South Carolina’s mulattos, octoroons (a person with one-eighth black ancestry), and quadroons (a person with one-quarter black ancestry), were often given their freedom while darker-skinned individuals remained in slavery. James Mitchell, George Bampfield, William Cattel, George Bedon, and Samuel Saltus, all mulatto members of Charleston’s St. Phillips Episcopal Church, founded the Brown Fellowship Society. Although the church was interracial, the attached cemetery was restricted to whites. The Fellowship Society aimed to establish their own cemetery for “brown” African American individuals, believing it would foster a sense of social unity among them. Officially the stated purpose was to provide respectable funerals for Society members, support widows, and educate surviving children. Determined not to upset the white community, the Society did nothing to help slaves (indeed, some lighter-skinned members were slave-owners themselves) and were careful about whom they admitted to their ranks, which consisted of … Continue reading Brown Fellowship Society (1790-1945)