PRINCE HALL FREEMASONRY

BY BRO. GEORGE DRAFFEN OF NEWINGTON, P.J.G.D., P.M.
Depute Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Scotland
Fellow The Phylaxis Society

(13 May 1976)

In the United States of America, in Canada and in the Bahamas there are some forty Grand Lodges of Prince Hall Freemasonry. There is also in Liberia a Grand Lodge of Prince Hall origin. These Prince Hall Grand Lodges exercise authority over more than five thousand lodges. They claim descent, directly or indirectly, from the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts which, in turn, is the offspring of African Lodge No. 459 warranted by the Grand Lodge of England (Moderns) on 20 September 1784. The great majority of these Prince Hall Grand Lodges incorporate the words 'Prince Hall' in their title. This was done following upon a recommendation made at a conference of Prince Hall Grand Masters held at Hot Springs, Arkansas, in January 1944. The object of adding the words 'Prince Hall' to the titles of the Grand Lodges was to overcome the confusion which had arisen among African-American members of the community in the United States where African-American freemasonry had been subjected to an interminable number of schisms and clandestine 'Grand Lodges' - all aimed at the gullible. While the Prince Hall Grand Lodges are not recognized by the Grand Lodges in the United States they are regarded by most of them as having a certain authenticity as opposed to the spurious and clandestine African-American Grand Lodges which have sprung up from time to time.

THE PRINCE HALL TRADITION

The traditional story regarding Prince Hall is published annually in the Prince Hall Masonic Year Book, an official publication sponsored by the Grand Masters' Conference of Prince Hall Masons of America. It must, therefore, be assumed that this traditional history is regarded as correct and accurate by the various Prince Hall Grand Lodges of the United States of America. As printed in the Prince Hall Masonic Year Book the official story of the gentleman known as Prince Hall runs thus:

Prince Hall was born at Bridgetown, Barbados, West Indies, about September 12, 1748. He was freeborn. His father, Thomas Prince Hall, was an Englishman and his mother a free coloured woman of French extraction. In 1765, at the age of 17, he worked his passage on a ship to Boston, where he worked as a leather-worker, a trade learned from his father. Eight years later he had acquired real estate and was qualified to vote. He was religiously inclined and later became a preacher in the Methodist Church with a Charge at Cambridge. On March 6, 1775, Prince Hall and fourteen other free Negroes of Boston were made Master Masons in an Army lodge attached to one of General Gage's regiments, then stationed near Boston. This lodge granted Prince Hall and his brethren authority to meet as a lodge, to go in procession on St John's Day, and as a lodge to bury their dead, but they could not confer degrees nor perform any other masonic ‘work'.

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