Sacred and Secular Leaders: Black Civic Spheres and Associations in Post-emancipation São Paulo, Brazil, 1890–1930

This paper analyzes the relationship between black lay Catholic brotherhoods, known in Portuguese as irmandades, and the development of secular black civic spheres in São Paulo, Brazil from 1897 to 1930. Suggestive evidence located in both state and ecclesiastic archives in the city of São Paulo indicate that black confraternities produced leaders who transferred organizing and leadership experience to the development of secular civic associations after emancipation.  Afro-Brazilians benefited from brotherhood membership not just as a social space; they also gained a group of leaders familiar with the language, the structure, and administration of semi-autonomous, state recognized corporate associations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper argues that black lay Catholic brotherhoods, which flourished under slavery, gave rise to a group of self-identified black leaders who contributed to the establishment of secular associations committed to racial uplift after emancipation.