The Lime-Kiln Club was a fictitious fraternal organization of African Americans created by writer and journalist Charles Bertrand Lewis for the Detroit Free Press in the late 19th century.
The Free Press was a Democratic weekly paper owned by the Scripps brothers, and it was notable in its era for humor, low cost, and reliance on advertising revenue.
[3] Lewis's Lime Kiln Club was a fictional, African American, fraternal organization featuring negative stereotypes of Black people in an appeal to working-class Democrats during a racially charged era.
[1][2] Lewis wrote his pieces in African American dialect and spoken by characters with names like Brother Gardner, Waydown Bebee, and Elder Toots.
Charles Lewis ceased writing Lime Kiln Club stories when he left The Detroit Free Press for a higher salary at New York World in 1891.