FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press has reprinted a long out of print history of an important African American organization. History of the Mosaic Templars of America: Its Founders and Officialsby A.E. Bush and P.L. Dorman(cloth, $24.95) was originally published in 1924. It tells the story of Little Rock’s Mosaic Templars of America, a black fraternal organization that was founded by two former slaves in Little Rock in the late 19th century.

The organization originally provided illness, death and burial insurance during an era of segregation when few basic services were available to black people. By 1900 Mosaic Templars’ industries grew to include an insurance company, a building and loan association, a publishing company, a national newspaper, a business college, a nursing school and a hospital. By 1905 it had a number of lodges across the state with thousands of members. Its headquarters were housed in a handsome new building that opened in Little Rock in 1913; Booker T. Washington delivered the dedication speech. In the 1920s the Mosaic Templars claimed chapters in 26 states and six foreign countries with a membership in the tens of thousands, making it one of the largest black organizations in the world.

However, in the 1930s the Mosaic Templars began to feel the effects of the Great Depression and eventually ceased operations. A single chapter remains, in Barbados. The headquarters building burned down in 2005, and this book is being published to coincide with the grand opening of a completely rebuilt structure that will house the new Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.

On Saturday, Sept. 20, the cultural center will open its doors to the public in the footprint of the original building, this time as a museum dedicated to the legacy of Arkansas’ African American culture and business. The center’s exhibits, educational programs and collections will focus on all aspects of African American life in Arkansas, with emphasis on achievements in business, politics and the arts. The center, the fourth museum of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, will also have a bookstore that will sell this book and others dealing with the African American experience.

Constance Sarto, director of the center, said, “It’s quite thrilling to once again see the building in the skyline and to see a new center materialize at the same historic site where the former MTA headquarters building stood for nearly a century.” 

John William Graves, chair of the department of social sciences and professor of history at Henderson State University and a member of the cultural center’s advisory board, has provided an introduction to this new edition. In it he writes that it was the Mosaic Templar’s financial success “that enabled its leaders to champion their race’s interest and battle against discrimination.”