Person · 1735–1807
Prince Hall
Abolitionist and community leader who founded the first Black Masonic lodge, building one of the earliest enduring independent Black institutions in America.
A pioneer of free Black community life and independent Black institution-building.
A free Black Bostonian — likely once enslaved — Prince Hall became a leatherworker, a Methodist preacher, and a tireless organizer. In 1775 he and fourteen other Black men were initiated into Freemasonry by a British military lodge; in 1784 they obtained a charter for African Lodge No. 459, the founding of what became Prince Hall Freemasonry.
Hall used these institutions as a base for activism: he petitioned Massachusetts to abolish slavery, to protect free Black people from kidnapping, and to fund education for Black children. His lodges became models of Black self-organization that would multiply across the nineteenth century.
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- part of·ThreadFree Black Communities
Prince Hall built some of the earliest enduring independent Black institutions.