Collection: The United Order of Tents Eastern District No. 3: Sisters of Secrecy, Service, and Sacred Survival
(On Display: 1888 United Order of Tents Eastern District No. 3 Underground Railroad Conference Pin)
Step closer and witness a Black secret society that wasn’t built on whispers and shadows, but on faith, fortitude, and freedom. This is the United Order of Tents, Eastern District No. 3: a powerful, Black women-led mutual aid society born during Reconstruction and still thriving today. Hidden in plain sight, these women have been the backbone of our communities for over a century. They are the quiet storm of resistance, the mothers of the movement you may never have heard of: but always felt.
As a Black historian, museum curator, and revolutionary who honors the sacred labor of Black women, I proclaim this:
The United Order of Tents is one of the most spiritually rooted, socially necessary, and historically under-recognized institutions in Black America.
Founded in the late 1800s, (by formerly enslaved women and abolitionists Annetta M. Lane and Harriet R. Taylor) the Order was part secret society, part benevolent sisterhood, and all about the uplift of our people. The name “Tents” is no accident; it’s a nod to the portable shelters used to hide and protect our people during the Underground Railroad. These women extended that spirit of sanctuary into the 20th and 21st centuries: offering aid, housing, burial insurance, nursing care, and spiritual strength to Black communities when the world gave us nothing but closed doors.
In the face of Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, and systemic abandonment, the Tents kept our elders fed, our sick comforted, our dead honored, and our culture alive.
But what makes Eastern District No. 3 particularly special is its geographic heartbeat, stretching across Virginia and the Carolinas, the district serves as a cultural and spiritual stronghold in the very soil where our ancestors toiled. These women were nurses, teachers, caregivers, community mothers, and quiet warriors who passed down not just service: but sacred knowledge.
Yes, they met in secret. Yes, they had rituals. But secrecy wasn’t about exclusion, it was protection. Because Black women organizing for the uplift of Black people has always been dangerous in America.
Even now, in the 21st century, the Tents remain active, adapting to modern needs while staying rooted in Black tradition. They remind us that Black women have always created infrastructure where there was none, and that we are our own best safety net.
“Long before social workers had offices and nonprofits had grants, the United Order of Tents had each other and that was enough. Their existence is proof that mutual aid is not a new concept in Black America; it’s an ancestral inheritance.”
- Dr. Tracy P. Washington (Curator, United Crowns Mobile Museum of Black History & Culture)