"William Washington Browne"(October 20,1849-December 21,1897)

Was a slave,a Union soldier during the Civil War (1861-1865),a teacher,a

Methodist minister,and the founder of Richmond's Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers,an African American fraternal organization.As leader of the True Reformers,he strived to help members live productive lives without depending upon the white community.By establishing insurance that provided members with sick and death benefits and by encouraging members to purchase land and engage in practices of temberance and thrift,William believed that African-American in the post-Civil War South could thrive.His enterprising mind helped lead the True Reformers in creating and organizing a bank which became the nation's first chartered African American financial institution and a model that others,such as Maggie Lena Walker,would follow.He was born in Habersham,Georgia,the son of Joseph & Mariah Browne.His parents were Virginia slaves who met after being sold and transported to Georgia.William's given was Ben.When he was about eight he was moved to a plantation near Memphis Tennessee,and then sold to a horse trader.After his sale William adopted the given names William Washington.He escaped bondage in 1862 after the U.S. Army occupied Memphis subsequently served first on a Union gunboat and then in the infantry.After being discharged in 1866 William attended school in Prairie du Chien Wisconsin,before returning to the South in 1869 to teach school.He Mary A.Graham while teaching in Alabama,and they were married on August 16,1873.His education won him immediate respect in the African American community.He further enhanced his standing throughout Georgia& Alabama by speaking out against the Ku Klux Klan during the early part of the 1870s,and by becoming a leading temperance,advocate.William sought the endorsement in Alabama of the of the Independent Order of Good Templar's,a white temperance society.The Good Templar's refused to be formally associated with African-Americans but offered William a compromise to which he would receive a charter and sponsorship under the separate name of the Grand United Order of True Reformers.He accepted,quit his teaching position,and began his rise to national prominence.A supered speaker,and organizer,William soon founded fifty local chapters,subfountains,which was the number of chapters of Good Tempar guidelines,required for the establishment of a state organization,called a grand fountain.To enhance his authority and expand his audience,He looked to the church.The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church Conference of Alabama licensed him to preach and ordained him in August 1876 the grand lodge of Good Templars of Virginia invited William to leads its new branch of the True Reformers in Richmond.A bastion of African Americans temperance,in the city proved quite a challenge.After an auspicious start,interest in the Reformers quickly dwindled.William returned to Alabama,where he developed plans to transform his temperance society into an insurance organization with a bank,but he could not obtain the state charter necessary for the enterprise.In 1880 he moved to Richmond to take control of the weak Grand Fountain of Virginia and their continued to work on his plan to create a business empire out of the True Reformers.Shortly after his arrival in Richmond he also served for a time as pastor of the Leigh Street Methodist Episcopal Church.His first effort,the Mutual Benefit and Relief Plan of the United Order of True Reformers,was poorly planned savings and death benefit system that depended on continual recruitment of new members to pay its beneficiaries,which made it little more than a Ponzi scheme.In January 1884,the General Assembly passed a bill incorporating the Supreme Fountain Grand United Orders of True Reformers,and in 1885 after further study the True Reformers instituted the first insurance plan of an African American fraternal society that was based on actuarial calculations of life expectancies.Members and prospective members paid varying fee for their insurance according to their ages.The insurance system proved quite profitable and soon supported other Reformers enterprises.William established the rosebud department to instill principles of thrift in members`children.He also began to expand the order's business operations by purchasing real estate in Richmond and elsewhere as the order spread across Virginia and the eastern U.S.William's most daring move came on March 2,1888,when the order received a state charter for the nation's first African-American owned,bank African American operated bank.The True Reformer's bank prospered for years and was the only bank in Richmond able to continue honoring checks during the financial panic of 1893.In may 1891,the Reformers dedicated a new hall housed the various operations of the order.The building contained the bank,several business offices,three stores,and four large meeting rooms,and a concert hall.The largest building in the city,owned by African American,it was also constructed entirely by African Americans.By that time the order's membership approached 10,000,and it soon acquired a hotel,published a weekly newspaper,ran a general merchandise store,and operated a home for aged members.From its humble beginnings as a temperance society William built the order into the largest African American fraternal society and African-American owned business in the country.The impressive new True Reformer's Hall in Richmond symbolized the order's premier position.Success notwithstanding,William engendered controversy in Richmond's African American community.His conservatism and enormous ego irritated many of his contemporaries,most notably John Mitchell Jr.,the editor of the Richmond Planet.Two incidents in 1895 particularly raised hackles.After John and an African American Massachusetts Committee on Mercantile Affairs,William wrote to a local newspaper criticizing their behavior and explaining his own less confrontational view of race relations:"Legal equality and cordial relation-to the extent of building up the negro race-are the the desires of respectable and sensible negroes;and they are as much opposed to social equality between whites and African-Americans as are the whites themselves."The following September William arranged to sell his copyrighted plans for the True Reformers to the order for $50,000 .Many in Richmond,and John in particular,regarded the transaction as an overwhelming proof of  William's greed.William's standing was widely recognized.He was one of only eight men,including Booker T.Washington,selected to represent African American at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895.The True Reformer's exhibition there enhanced William's stature and that of his order in what proved to be his last major achievement.In 1897  physicians discovered a cancerous tumor and urged him to have the affected arm amputated,he refused.The cancer spread quickly,and William died in Washington,D.C.He is buried in Sycamore Cemetery,and his funeral was one of the largest ever seen in Richmond's African American community.He bequeathed his estate to Mary,except for small legacies to the boy and girl they adopted.After William death the True Reformers initially continued to prosper,the order collapsed in the wake of the scandalous failure of its bank in 1910.