Louise Truitt Jackson Dench & Marion Turner Stubbs Thomas, co-founders of Jack and Jill of America, Inc.
The traditional elites in American society are largely made up of the old families, which, in ethnic terms, signifies families of European, predominantly Anglo-Saxon, origin.
As might be expected, families of a more recent immigration and of different ethnic origins adopted American customs and styles through the generations and gradually became integral elements of the American elites. In addition to this, within their own communities they established their own social hierarchy.
Founded in Nashville, Tenn., in 1866, just six months after the end of the Civil War, Fisk University has become an institution of higher learning for members of black elite families. Photo by EVula.
Few people realize, for example, that among black Americans there flourishes an elite with its own intense social life, debuts, clubs, and old families, which plays within its own milieu a role equivalent to that of the traditional elites in American society as a whole.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites in the Allocutions of Pius XII: A Theme Illuminating American Social History (York, Penn.: The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property, 1993), Appendix I, p. 327.
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Also of interest:
Family Associations
The aristocratic character of hereditary associations
The private character of hereditary associations
Traditional Elites in Other Social Categories
Traditional Elites in the Upper Class
Associations of Descendants of the European Nobility
