Join the Sumter Historic Trust for the annual meeting to discuss recent and upcoming events. Light refreshments will be served, and this event is free and open to the public. The Honorable Rucker Smith will present the Nominating Committee Report.

We are excited to welcome back Dr. Susan Bragg, Professor of History and Co-Director of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Georgia Southwestern State University

Dr. Bragg will explore the history of the African American Knights of Pythias in Americus and their impact on Black community life during the Jim Crow era. Below is an overview:

In early July 1895, the Star 8 Lodge of the ‘Colored’ Knights of Pythias hosted the 6th annual state Grand Lodge meeting, welcoming over 2,000 African American Pythians from across Georgia to Americus. Although the Americus Times-Recorder regularly circulated highly racist political rhetoric, the paper’s editor described the event as “the most interesting event ever held by that order.” This reporting celebrated the ‘orderliness’ of the Pythians, but for African Americans, membership in this fraternal society represented an important strategy of asserting black manhood and race pride in an era of white supremacy.

It is not clear when the Star 8 Lodge in Americus was organized but they were part of the Knights of Pythias of North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa fraternal order, a group first established in 1869 after the white-organized Knights of Pythias of the World refused to sanction African American Knights of Pythias chapters. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reports of the ‘Colored’ Knights of Pythias frequently appeared in the Americus Times-Recorder, demonstrating the group’s prominence within the city’s black community. A local white chapter, the George F. Cooper Lodge, also flourished in Americus during these years, but the groups remained strictly segregated. Like most other fraternal societies, both white and black divisions of the Knights of Pythias offered networking opportunities and death benefits to family members. Thus, joining a fraternal lodge was identified with individual respectability and civic interests in these years.

Most notably, African American chapters of the Knights of Pythias were recognized for drilling maneuvers, or militarized marching. This practice was associated with a masculine display of power and skill in the 19th and early 20th century. The Americus press often covered this public parading through the streets of the city. At the 1895 convention, Pythians marched to City Hall, and in a later 1908 meeting, divisions from across the state marched to a local baseball park where prizes were awarded. While Jim Crow limited black men’s voting and civil rights, these public spectacles brought a regional spotlight to black men’s militarized readiness and public self-assertion. These activities suggest the racial ferment within the segregated South, even in the dark years of formalized white supremacy.