Helping To Find Aid and Comfort: The Mosaic Templars of America in Texas (Feb 18, 2024)
by Scott Sosebee
Perhaps the most transformative period ever in American history took place from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth. The end of the Civil War brought—I suppose some may say wrought—some of the most profound social, cultural, and economic changes the nation has ever seen. The end of slavery, for just one, meant that African Americans in mass numbers had to learn to cope with not only self-preservation in a racist society, but also how to build a broad-based community in a land that often did not want them to be a part. Such a reality would have been daunting in and of itself, but it also took place at the same time the nation’s society and culture were changing through rapid industrialization, new economic realities, and a population boom, especially within the nation’s cities. Such was the environment that led to the creation of the Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), a fraternal and mutual aid society for African Americans that would provide valuable services for African Americans struggling to find such aid in the Jim Crow South and the rest of the nation.
Mutual Aid Societies were not unique to African Americans in the late nineteenth century; the organization of such groups became a staple of American society and filled a gap for instruments such as insurance, health care, burial, and aid to poverty-stricken families in a rapidly industrial society that was certainly enriching a few Americans to wealth previously never imagined, while at the same time condemning many more to a life of abject poverty and deprivation. Mutual Aid societies—termed mutualistas—appeared among Mexican Americans and immigrants of Mexican descent during this period in Texas, California, and other Southwestern states, and similar societies began among the small middle class and the much larger working class of the nation’s cities, the vast majority of them among immigrant communities. All of these organizations had dual missions: instill pride and a sense of community among people of the same ethnicity and race, while at the same time provide those services that the targeted communities found difficult to obtain.
The Mosaic Templars of America was founded in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1882 by two former slaves, John Edward Bush and Chester W. Keatts. The name came from the Biblical figure Moses, who was understandably popular with African American Christians, given his association with leading the ancient Israelites out of slavery. While, like all mutual aid societies, the Mosaic Templars offered a communal and racial pride component, its primary purpose was to create a financial fund to offer illness, death, and burial insurance to African Americans shut out of other avenues of such aid by racial prejudice and segregation. In addition to the lack of availability due to race, there was also a problem that a number of insurance outlets that did sell to African Americans were either nothing more than fronts to defraud people of their money, or so poorly capitalized they dissolved before any benefits could be distributed. The Mosaic Templars hoped to solve both problems and it reached a peak membership in the early 1920s when it could claim over 100,000 members among chapters in twenty-six states.
Texas was the fifth state to have Mosaic Templars chapters when one was chartered in Bowie County (Texarkana) in 1903. They spread from there—mostly in East Texas, the home of the majority of African Americans in the state—and at its height Texas claimed thirty-seven organized chapters in twenty-five towns and cities. The largest of these was in San Augustine, but there were also healthy and numerous chapters in Commerce, Paris, Center, Hearne, and Cleburne. Texans also rose to leadership in the national organization. A.W. Weatherford of Texarkana served as the Grand Master of Texas and a member of the advisory council of the national organization. Zenobia Trimble, of Wichita Falls, served as a member of the Templars National Committee of Management.
The Mosaic Templars were also unique among mutual aid societies in that they offered membership and benefits for women and children members, although they did separate them. Chapters for men were known as “temples,” those for women were “chambers,” and for children “palaces.” MTA members could purchase various kinds of insurance policies that were made affordable through the power of group monetary accumulation but also through ways to pay monthly or semi-annually. The most popular—and successful—was their monument or “burial department” and national figures called Texas chapters the “model” for that end-of-life service. Death could put a great strain on a family’s finances; certainly, life insurance could help ease that burden, but much of that source of financial aid could be gobbled up by funeral and monument expenses. The MTA “Burial and Monument Department” helped to ease that obligation. MTA members had access to burial policies that usually paid members somewhere between $200 and $300, depending on level purchased, upon death, but they also paid a “tax” of fifty cents a month that entitled them to have a distinctive gravestone marker made of white Vermont marble to place on a loved one’s burial site. A visit to African American cemeteries throughout Texas would find numerous MTA markers, most dated between 1915 and 1929. For example, at the Zion Hill Cemetery in Nacogdoches, there is an MTA marker on the grave of Joe Ella Ceasor, who died in 1925.
The Mosaic Templars of America provided their vital services through the 1920s, but like so many other organizations and businesses it did not survive the ravages of the Great Depression in the 1930s. The organization and its financial accounts went into receivership in the summer of 1930 because the stock market crash and the closing of several banks in which it had deposited funds severely affected its premium investments. It briefly resurrected as the Modern Mosaic Templars in 1931 with Scipio Jones heading the organization, but that iteration appears to have also ceased to exist by 1934, although one chapter in Jamaica lasted until 1938. Today, a ceremonial Templar group still meets and functions as a social organization in Barbados, a faint remnant of an important component of the ways African Americans had coped with the vagaries of a racially oppressive society.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.