It was founded as the National Fraternal Congress of America in 1913, in Chicago, Illinois.

[2] The origins of the AFA go back to November 17, 1886, when a congress of sixteen fraternal orders representing 535,000 members met in Washington, DC.

The 1913 meeting in Chicago resulted in the formation of a permanent organization, the National Fraternal Congress (NFC).

[2][1] Another group the competed with the NFC for a time was the American Fraternal Congress, which was organized in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1898.

This group differed from the NFC in that it only allowed orders that had adopted the legal reserve system to be members.