"William Patrick Burrell" (November 25 1865-March 18 1952)

Civil and organization leader, was born in Richmond, Virginia,to William P. Burrell, a butler and hotel waiter,and Mildred Burrell, a washerwoman.His parents had been slaves,most likely in Richmond,and his uncle James B. Burrell was prominent among African American entrepreneurs in the early years after Emancipation.William was one of fourteen children, but his intelligence and energy made him stand out.Reportedly William was selling ice water to thirsty Richmonders at the age of five,and he soon became his mother's assistant, gathering and returning the clothes she washed.His experienced conversion in 1877  and formally joined Moore Street Baptist Church,having served the church's Sunday school as librarian and secretary from the age of nine. He was successively elected church clerk, janitor, deacon,treasurer, and trustee.Elected assistant secretary of the Richmond Baptist Sunday School Union at eleven, he became its secretary, chaplain, and long time president.In that role William delivered a protest in April 1904 against the local transit company's decision to segregate street cars,which helped to inspire a lengthy, albeit unsuccessful,black boycott of the Jim Crow cars.In January 1881,when he was fifteen, William was presented to William Washington Browne,who wanted to hire a secretary. William Browne, who had come Richmond from Alabama,where in 1874 he had chartered the United Order of True Reformers,a racially separate offshoot of the Grand Lodge of Good Templar's,a white temperance society. William Browne was a Methodist and pastor of the Leigh Street Methodist Episcopal Church until his congregation asked him to choose between the church and the True Reformers.He was a successful organizer of local chapters,including a branch in Richmond,but his ambitions went beyond operating a financially strapped temperance society,technically subordinate to racist whites. He envisioned the order as the basis for an African American insurance and business enterprise.When Richmond members of the faltering local fountains,or chapters,of the True Reformers called William Browne, he saw the opportunity to institute his plan. William Browne's plan at first required that each member of the True Reformers purchase for $1.50 a death benefit certificate that would pay a fixed sum to the member's heirs.Neither continued expansion of the membership nor reductions in the promised death benefit could make this scheme workable, and in 1885 the True Reformers, with fifty-one fountains,