Brown Fellowship Society

The Brown Fellowship Society was founded in Charleston, South Carolina in 1790 with the motto “Charity and Benevolence”.

It was founded “to provide benefits which the white church denied them like a proper burial ground, widow and orphan care, and assistance in times of sickness”.

[2] Unlike some mutual self-help organization in the African-American community, the Brown Society was not linked to any church, even banning discussion of religion.

In 1843, another group was formed by African American men in Charleston, the Humane Brotherhood, modeled after the Brown Fellowship Society, but less class conscious.

For many years afterwards, the Catholic Diocese kept affirming that the cemetery had been cleared of corpses, but in 2001, four gravesites were discovered when the construction of the College of Charleston's Addlestone Library was launched.