PRINCE HALL Biography - Religious Figures & Icons

 
 

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PRINCE HALL

Name: Prince Hall                                                                         
Born: 1738                                                                               
Died: 1807                                                                               
                                                                                         
Prince Hall (c.1738 - December 4, 1807) is considered the founder of "Black               
Freemasonry" in the United States, known today as Prince Hall Freemasonry.               
                                                                                         
Prince Hall's birthdate and birthplace are subject to conjecture. He may have             
been born in either England, Massachusetts or Barbados, and the year 1738 is now         
generally agreed on though not certain. Narrative stories of Prince Hall's birth         
and youth are unsubstantiated and appear to have been invented by their authors           
(particularly William H. Grimshaw in 1903).                                               
                                                                                         
Documents in Massachusetts showing that slaveowner William Hall freed a man               
named Prince Hall on April 9, 1765 cannot be conclusively linked to any one               
individual as there exists record of no fewer than 21 males named Prince Hall,           
and several other men named Prince Hall were living in Boston at that time. It           
is also unknown whether he was free-born or a freedman.                                   
                                                                                         
Prince Hall was a property owner and a registered voter in Boston. He worked as           
an abolitionist and civil rights activist, fought for laws to protect free               
blacks in Massachusetts from kidnapping by slave traders, campaigned for schools         
for black children, and operated a school in his own home.                               
                                                                                         
On March 6, 1775, Prince Hall and fourteen other free black men were initiated,           
passed and raised in Military Lodge No. 441, an integrated Lodge attached to the         
British Army and then stationed in Boston.                                               
                                                                                         
Prince Hall's grave in Cobb's Hill Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts                     
                                                                                         
It is probable that Prince Hall served in the Massachusetts militia during the           
American Revolutionary War, but his service record is unclear because at least           
six men from Massachusetts named "Prince Hall" served in the military during the         
war. Historians George Washington Williams and Carter Woodson believed that this         
Prince Hall did serve in the war. He may have been one of the black soldiers who         
fought on the American side of the Battle of Bunker Hill.                                 
                                                                                         
When the British Army left Boston in 1776, the black Masons were granted a               
dispensation for limited operations as African Lodge No. 1. They were entitled           
to meet as a Lodge, to take part in the Masonic procession on St. John's Day,             
and to bury their dead with Masonic rites, but not to confer degrees or perform           
other Masonic functions. Excluded by the Provincial Grand Lodge of Massachusetts,         
they were granted a charter by the Premier Grand Lodge of England in 1784 as             
African Lodge No. 459 (but, due to communications problems, did not receive the           
actual charter until 1787).                                                               
                                                                                         
Shortly after that, black Masons elsewhere in the United States began contacting         
Prince Hall with requests to establish affiliated Lodges in their own cities.             
Consistent with European Masonic practice at that time, African Lodge granted             
their requests and served as Mother Lodge to new black Lodges in Philadelphia,           
Providence and New York.                                                                 
                                                                                         
A problem quickly arose for black men wishing to become Masons in the newly               
formed United States: the members of a Lodge must agree unanimously in an                 
anonymous vote to accept a petitioner to receive the degrees. As a consequence           
of the unanimity requirement, if just one member of a lodge did not want black           
men in his Lodge, his vote was enough to cause the petitioner's rejection. Thus,         
although exceptions did exist, Masonic Lodges and Grand Lodges in the United             
States generally excluded African Americans. And since the vote is conducted             
anonymously, this created a second problem: since no one knew who had voted               
against the applicant, it was impossible to identify a member as pursuing a               
policy of racism. This allowed even a tiny number of prejudiced members to               
effectively deny membership to black petitioners, and in some cases even exclude         
black men who had legitimately been made Masons in integrated jurisdictions.             
Thus there arose a system of racial segregation in American Masonry, which               
remained in place until the 1960s and which persists in some jurisdictions even           
to this day.                                                                             
                                                                                         
In 1791, black Freemasons met in Boston and formed the African Grand Lodge of             
North America. Prince Hall was unanimously elected its Grand Master and served           
until his death in 1807. (The claim that he was appointed Provincial Grand               
Master for North America in 1791 appears to have been fabricated.) The African           
Grand Lodge was later renamed the Prince Hall Grand Lodge in his honor. In 1827           
the African Grand Lodge declared its independence from the United Grand Lodge of         
England, as the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts had done 45 years earlier. It also           
stated its independence from all of the white Grand Lodges in the United States.         
                                                                                         
Today, predominantly black Prince Hall Grand Lodges exist in the United States,           
Canada, the Caribbean and Liberia, governing Prince Hall Lodges throughout the           
world. After nearly two centuries of controversy, the Grand Lodge of England was         
asked to decide the matter of Prince Hall Masonic legitimacy. Carefully studying         
the records, the Grand Lodge of England concluded that the Prince Hall Grand             
Lodge of Massachusetts was indeed entitled to Masonic recognition, and this               
against the tradition that, per state, only one recognised Masonic body should           
exist. As a result, most (though not all) "mainstream" (i.e. predominantly white)         
Grand Lodges in the United States and elsewhere have extended full fraternal             
recognition to their Prince Hall counterparts.