Grand United Order of True Reformers

This organization existed as a business and a mutual-aid society during the era of Jim Crow segregation laws, and it supported the growing African-American middle class through economic opportunities and education, before its closure in 1934.

[1] William "Ben" Washington Browne was born in 1849 as a Black man into bondage on the Georgia plantation owned by Benjamin Pryor in Habersham County.

However, the Good Templars agreed to foster the separate affiliated all-black group called the United Order of True Reformers.

[3][4] The Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers was founded by William Washington Browne c. 1875 in Richmond, Virginia [4] as an African-American fraternal organization.

[6] The Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers expanded to support a growing African American middle class and offered business services including a bank and a real estate company.

[8] Browne managed the organization up until 1898, whereupon W. L. Taylor, born a slave in Caroline County Virginia, and freed while a child after the Civil War, became the official leader.

[3] Giles Beecher Jackson of Richmond, Virginia had helped found the bank affiliated with the True Reformers organization.

The banking room (1895) in the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain
The banking room (1895) in the Savings Bank of the Grand Fountain
True Reformer Building, 1200 U Street Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC
True Reformer Building , 1200 U Street Northwest in Washington, District of Columbia, D.C.
A working branch of The True Reformers Savings Bank within the Negro Building at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition
A working branch of The True Reformers Savings Bank within the Negro Building at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition