Typically the Maryland State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution would hold a tea to celebrate the group’s newest officers.

Reisha Raney, a Prince George’s County resident and the first black officer for the state society, put a spin on the event by holding it at Ceremony Coffee Roasters near the Wiley H. Bates Legacy Center in Annapolis. The women — all descendants of people who helped win America’s independence — sampled coffee, drank coffee cocktails selected by the officers, and learned about the coffee family tree on a recent afternoon.

“How cute is that?” Raney said. “We’re a family lineage society that cares a lot about genealogy, so we’re going to look at the genealogy of coffee.”

The spin on tradition is just one thing Raney is doing to change the public perception of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The coffee shop isn’t stuffy, she said, it’s accessible.

“Some people see it as an old lady society or just ladies who have lunch,” she said. “We do a lot of community service projects. We’re a service organization.”

Raney is the descendant of Thomas Jefferson’s grandfather. Raney was elected to the position of State Organizing Secretary last summer, and the event in Annapolis honored her, new State Registrar Pamela Donahue and new State Librarian Mary Anne Adkins. Raney’s job is to bring more chapters and members to Maryland’s DAR, and she has traveled the state talking with other members. DAR had three big focuses — historic preservation, patriotism and education.

She found younger members have interests in charitable programs that are more hands on, such as building a pollinator garden, as well as an interest in working to combat human trafficking. More senior members might want to focus on projects related to veterans, such as sending care baskets overseas.

“So, that’s my job as organizing secretary, to understand where our interests lie and align them with the members that we’re trying to attract,” Raney said.

She is trying to attract members of all ages and races — she wants to show that today’s DAR is inclusive. April 9 was 80th anniversary of the open-air concert singer Marian Anderson gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after the DAR refused to let her perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

“The society has evolved since then,” she said. “I don’t think the public is evolving with it. I think a lot of the public is still holding onto where they were in the past. They still have to work very hard at redeeming their reputation, the DAR does, and I want to be a part of that process.”

She also is a research fellow at Harvard University, she said, through which she is looking to compile the stories and experiences of other black members of the DAR in a project called the Daughter Dialogues. Raney said she is at a pivotal point with that research, where she has found a network of other black DAR members. The organization doesn’t keep track of the race of members, she said, so it took some effort to find people to interview.

For her, going through the society’s process to verify her lineage validated her sense of identity.

“As opposed to this is a country that my family was brought into through slavery, I look at it as this is my country that [was] built on the backs of my family,” she said. “It makes me feel a greater sense of pride.”

She said some people don’t realize that the DAR has members of color, or than more than 6,000 people of color fought or contributed to the American Revolution.

rpacella@capgaznews.com