The Knights and Ladies of Honor was a highly successful and popular American fraternal benefit organization in the late 19th and early twentieth century.
It is perhaps the first major fraternal benefit organization to adopt the idea of diversity allowing non-white persons and racial groups to be recognized and establish lodges.
The first official meeting of the "Supreme Lodge of Protection, Knights of and Ladies of Honor" was held on September 19, 1878, in St. Louis and the order was incorporated by the Commonwealth of Kentucky on the following April.
[7] When they started in 1878, membership in the Knights and Ladies of Honor was open to acceptable white men and women between the ages of eighteen and fifty who were in a reputable profession, business or occupation.
In 1916 older members of the group appealed to the New York State Department of Insurance to protect their interests, claiming that the assessments were exorbitant and was half a million dollars behind on its death benefits.