get these nets
Veteran
Black Soldiers Played an Undeniable but Largely Unheralded Role in Founding the United States
Veterans like Prince Hall fought for independence and then abolition in the earliest days of the nation
A dedication marker outside of the damaged Prince Hall Masonic Lodge.
February 24, 2021
Just after dawn on Christmas Day 2020, Clarence Snead Jr., received a phone call with harrowing news: The Prince Hall Masonic Lodge in Providence, Rhode Island, was ablaze. Snead, whose nickname is “Grand” (for “Most Worshipful Grand Master”), rushed the half-hour drive to the lodge on Eddy Street and found the building engulfed in flames.
The lodge had a remarkable history that a passerby might not suspect from the two-story wooden structure; a destructive blaze would strike a terrible blow for historic preservation. It housed one of the earliest organizations established by African Americans, stretching back to the era of Prince Hall, a black Bostonian and Revolutionary War veteran. Hall started the first lodge for black Freemasons in his home city in the 1770s with a charter obtained from British Freemasons, because Massachusetts’ white Masonic brethren rejected his application. The arc of Hall’s life and legacy point to the underappreciated role played by African Americans in the Revolution, an indication that the path to black civil rights is as old as the nation itself.
As founder of America’s first fraternal organization for African Americans, Hall has the stature of a founding father. Over time the group came to be called Prince Hall Freemasons; Prince Hall Masonic lodges spread across the country in the 1800s and continue today.
The lodge in Providence where Snead serves as Grand Master was one of the first that Hall organized outside of Boston. “We’re the second lodge that Prince Hall came down and established,” Snead said recently by phone. After the fire, he said, the building was “totaled,” its charred exterior matched by a gutted inside. The lodge was one of just three founded by Hall during his lifetime.
Recognition of Hall by historians and the general public outside of the Masonic community has been scarce. That started to change when the Cambridge, Massachusetts politician E. Denise Simmons proposed a public monument to Hall, who is buried just across the Charles River in Boston’s Copp’s Hill burying ground. The memorial was unveiled in 2010 on the Cambridge Common, where legend holds that George Washington took command of the Continental Army and may have encountered Hall. Six black stone obelisks stand in a near circle, with inscriptions about Hall’s life including his service in the Revolution.
“When you study Prince Hall, you learn he became a Mason because he saw this philosophy of Masonry as a way to advance his cause, to free his brethren and sisters,” says Simmons, who sees a throughline between Hall and Martin Luther King, who she says “stands squarely on the shoulders of Prince Hall.” Her grandfather, a guidepost of her early life, was a Prince Hall Mason in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Red Mitchell, a lifetime Prince Hall Mason, supported Simmons on the committee for the memorial. He says the principles of Prince Hall Freemasonry boil down to “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all man.”
For him, the memorial also speaks to the unsung black participation in the Revolutionary War. “A lot of people think this monument is just about Prince Hall, but it represents more, the start of emancipation, and the first blacks to truly call themselves African-Americans,’’ Mitchell told the Boston Globe before the memorial was unveiled. “We’re talking about those patriots of African descent who helped lay the foundation of our nation during the Revolutionary period.’’
The details of Hall’s life are patchy for the reason that bedevils African American history generally: a dearth of research documenting black lives. His birthplace may or may not have been Barbados. (In The Atlantic, scholar Danielle Hall suggests he was born in Boston.) He learned the leatherworking trade from his enslaver, William Hall, possibly enjoying some freedom before being formally emancipated by 1770. He founded the Masonic lodge by 1775, fought for the Continental Army, petitioned and gave speeches for ending slavery, and started a school in his home for children of color, all before his death in 1807
Veterans like Prince Hall fought for independence and then abolition in the earliest days of the nation
A dedication marker outside of the damaged Prince Hall Masonic Lodge.
February 24, 2021
Just after dawn on Christmas Day 2020, Clarence Snead Jr., received a phone call with harrowing news: The Prince Hall Masonic Lodge in Providence, Rhode Island, was ablaze. Snead, whose nickname is “Grand” (for “Most Worshipful Grand Master”), rushed the half-hour drive to the lodge on Eddy Street and found the building engulfed in flames.
The lodge had a remarkable history that a passerby might not suspect from the two-story wooden structure; a destructive blaze would strike a terrible blow for historic preservation. It housed one of the earliest organizations established by African Americans, stretching back to the era of Prince Hall, a black Bostonian and Revolutionary War veteran. Hall started the first lodge for black Freemasons in his home city in the 1770s with a charter obtained from British Freemasons, because Massachusetts’ white Masonic brethren rejected his application. The arc of Hall’s life and legacy point to the underappreciated role played by African Americans in the Revolution, an indication that the path to black civil rights is as old as the nation itself.
As founder of America’s first fraternal organization for African Americans, Hall has the stature of a founding father. Over time the group came to be called Prince Hall Freemasons; Prince Hall Masonic lodges spread across the country in the 1800s and continue today.
The lodge in Providence where Snead serves as Grand Master was one of the first that Hall organized outside of Boston. “We’re the second lodge that Prince Hall came down and established,” Snead said recently by phone. After the fire, he said, the building was “totaled,” its charred exterior matched by a gutted inside. The lodge was one of just three founded by Hall during his lifetime.
Recognition of Hall by historians and the general public outside of the Masonic community has been scarce. That started to change when the Cambridge, Massachusetts politician E. Denise Simmons proposed a public monument to Hall, who is buried just across the Charles River in Boston’s Copp’s Hill burying ground. The memorial was unveiled in 2010 on the Cambridge Common, where legend holds that George Washington took command of the Continental Army and may have encountered Hall. Six black stone obelisks stand in a near circle, with inscriptions about Hall’s life including his service in the Revolution.
“When you study Prince Hall, you learn he became a Mason because he saw this philosophy of Masonry as a way to advance his cause, to free his brethren and sisters,” says Simmons, who sees a throughline between Hall and Martin Luther King, who she says “stands squarely on the shoulders of Prince Hall.” Her grandfather, a guidepost of her early life, was a Prince Hall Mason in Tuskegee, Alabama.
Red Mitchell, a lifetime Prince Hall Mason, supported Simmons on the committee for the memorial. He says the principles of Prince Hall Freemasonry boil down to “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of all man.”
For him, the memorial also speaks to the unsung black participation in the Revolutionary War. “A lot of people think this monument is just about Prince Hall, but it represents more, the start of emancipation, and the first blacks to truly call themselves African-Americans,’’ Mitchell told the Boston Globe before the memorial was unveiled. “We’re talking about those patriots of African descent who helped lay the foundation of our nation during the Revolutionary period.’’
The details of Hall’s life are patchy for the reason that bedevils African American history generally: a dearth of research documenting black lives. His birthplace may or may not have been Barbados. (In The Atlantic, scholar Danielle Hall suggests he was born in Boston.) He learned the leatherworking trade from his enslaver, William Hall, possibly enjoying some freedom before being formally emancipated by 1770. He founded the Masonic lodge by 1775, fought for the Continental Army, petitioned and gave speeches for ending slavery, and started a school in his home for children of color, all before his death in 1807
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