Odd Fellows Hall

Built at the northeast corner of Franklin and Mayo Streets, Odd Fellows Hall hosted opera performances, dance ensembles, and occasional visits by General Tom Thumb on its stage, while its basement served as a site for slave auctions announced by a red flag on the basement door. These open sales of men, women, and children contributed to the annual dispersion of over forty thousand blacks throughout the slave trading states in the antebellum years, and in particularly brisk years that number could double as family members were separated indefinitely. The Grand United Order of Odd Fellows had been established in England in the mid-1700's as a philanthropic organization open to both white and black members, but in 1813 many members split away to form the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, or I.O.O.F., which sought American enrollment and established its first official American chapter in Baltimore in 1819. Although the original order continued to honor black membership, the I.O.O.F. refused to recognize African American members or charter black or mixed-race groups. In 1843, African American members of an unrecognized New York group met Peter Ogden, a black British member of the original order, who secured a charter from England on March 1, 1843, and returned to found the first African American lodge of Odd Fellows later that year. In the South before the Civil War, strong sanctions prohibited blacks from gathering in public, forcing clandestine fraternal orders into secrecy, while in Richmond the I.O.O.F. had gained enough support by 1841 to justify a dedicated meeting house.

Richmond, Virginia · United States