"This is a moment that exemplifies the spirit of the Tents. It is an organization made up of dozens of chapters all over the South and Northeast, with hundreds of members currently. It was founded on the ideals of freedom, independence, and self-autonomy, but it is also firmly rooted in the practical. The Tents is a massively successful, wonderfully efficient community self-help organization that has operated without outside help for over 150 years. But because it is run by and for black women — black churchwomen — it is largely unknown and in fact was deliberately kept secret for much of its existence.
Annetta M. Lane and Harriet R. Taylor, two black women from Virginia, founded this order in 1867. Annetta was enslaved in Virginia and, according to her family's history, was a nurse on her plantation. This role meant that she moved both among the white enslavers in the main house and among the black people the family enslaved in the fields. Such a role meant she was valuable to the white slavers, and it also meant she could transmit information and care to those enslaved...
If your very self is dangerous, how do you keep it safe? For the Tents, the answer lies in secrecy. From the beginning, when they operated as an organization to help women escape slavery, they operated furtively. Later, as they worked to build wealth and economic independence in a segregated world, secrecy was again key. They incorporated under the name of two white lawyers both because it made gaining credentials easier and because those names helped shield the radical work they were doing...
Most astonishing about the Tents is the fact that about a generation out of slavery, in 1894, they established a rest home for the elderly that they ran continuously, with no outside financial help and with no bankruptcy, for over 100 years, until 2002. In addition, at a certain point in the mid-century, the Tents served as a mortgage house for black families and churches who would not have been able to apply for loans from white banks. The Tents, therefore, literally helped build the institutions and homes of their communities."
FB: "These organizations served as banks when most white-run institutions refused to trade or secure mortgages for black individuals or institutions. They served as insurance when insurance companies did the same. And almost just as important, they served as affirmation of black personhood, dignity, and independence at a time when the wider world insisted on black inferiority."
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