Ritualistic Ceremonies of the Provinces

[Pine Bluff, Arkansas]: [Supreme Union of Ethiopia], 1917. Good. 6¼" x 4 5/8". Stapled wrappers. Pp. 23 + cipher card laid in. Good: light vertical crease to wrappers and all leaves, some internal soil spots; owner notation to title page; offsetting to pages where card laid in.

This is an exceptionally rare ritual book for a little-known African American fraternal/benevolent society. While its text is fairly plain and standard for the genre, the book is evidence of one woman's effort to build a Black benevolent society and/or defraud its members.

The book lays out instructions for conducting the rituals bestowing first, second and third degrees onto members of the Supreme Union of Ethiopia [SUR]. Using public records and newspapers.com this seemingly anonymous organization springs to life with a fascinating history. SUR was also known by at least two other names: the Ethiopian Union of the World [EUW] and the Grand United Order of Ethiopia [GUOE]. The group's Arkansas Articles of Incorporation filed in July 1917 gives its name as "Supreme Union of Ethiopia or Ethiopian Union of the World," and the author of this book, Mary J. Page, used those two names in the title of another ritual book she also published in 1917.

Page's mentions in contemporary newspapers tease what may be a much deeper story which is worthy of further research. In a 1915 newspaper account of a meeting of the heads of Arkansas fraternal orders, she referred to herself as the "grand queen" of the slightly differently named entity--the GUOE. A 1914 newspaper article showed that she was a national officer [the "supreme lecturer"] of the Royal Circle of Friends of the World, a different Black insurance/fraternal organization. An October 1917 mention in The Arkansas Democrat called Page the founder of SUE/EUW/GUOE and that she presided over the group as its "Royal Queen." That same article stated that more than 500 delegates from five other surrounding states were in attendance for SUE's first triennial session. A different article on that SUE triennial session in the Pine Bluff Daily Graphic stated that 200 delegates had arrived, but over 1,000 were expected, and that "the great secret order's" motto was "Lifting As We Climb." That article further provided this glowing description of Page: "this great woman has traveled all over the South and . . . made many see that the South is the ne*ro's best place-a place where he can find work, earn his break and save money if he wants to do so. She proved to them in her convincing speeches that . . . he should remain here."

We also learn from that article that SUE claimed to own over $500,000 worth of property, published a weekly periodical, owned the only Black ice cream shop in the South, and that Page and her husband, S.J., had "purchased several thousand dollars' worth of real estate in the city of Pine Bluff and at Amy, Ark., they own the entire little town. A beautiful little town site opened, owned and operated by the Supreme Union of Ethiopia." The problem with all of these grandiose statements is that we find no evidence that Page was married, nor that there was an all-Black town in Amy, Arkansas. Muddying the waters further is a January 1919 Chattanooga News article which stated that Page had recently incorporated SUE in Tennessee, possibly because she was in the process of losing SUE's license in Arkansas, which was revoked around March 1919 for not complying with the law regulating fraternal insurance. Page was arrested in July 1919 for writing bad checks to purchase a vehicle that she said she was using to organize in Tennessee for the Grand Court of Calanthe, a women's branch of the African American offshoot of the Knights of Pythias. We are unable to locate her after 1919.

Page likely oversaw some sort of Black benevolent society in Arkansas. At a minimum she was a talented promoter, and, if the reports of her public appearances are accurate, an engaging speaker as shown in this excerpt of Page's closing speech at SUE's first triennial convention:

"the ne*ro has been carrying his coffin on his back for fifty years . . . the time has come for him to rise up and prepare to live and contribute his share to civilization . . . Lincoln . . . cut the chains . . . but it remains yet for the ne*ro to do his part in carrying out all that God intended for him to be, by organizing himself and building for himself something tangible in the commercial world."

Possibly the only extant relic of the efforts of Mary J. Page and her involvement with Black benevolent societies. OCLC locates no copies.