Prince Hall
...ous acts of charity and community development. Several examples are the 22 area Shrine hospitals for burned and crippled children. Masonry holds no secret teachings; only how these teachings of becoming a more learned individual are taught is sacred. Prince Hall Masonry emerged in lieu of many American Lodges not accepting to the idea of having African Americans a part of their order. Prince Hall himself was a native of Boston. He was a free African American and a leather shop owner, a rarity of its own kind. He and 14 of his fellow African American Friends were made Freemasons by a traveling military lodge, Irish Constitution. This military lodge, lodge No. 441, of the British 38th Regiment of Foot, initiated Prince Hall and his Friends on March 6, 1775 as African Lodge No. 1. But just as soon as the traveling lodge came, they were pulled out of the area in 1776 by the breakout of the Revolutionary War. Prince Hall took it upon himself to apply to the Grand Lodge in England to charter a new lodge on March 2, 1784. On September 29, 1784, his request was granted and delivered in Boston on April 29, 1787. This lodge was chartered African Lodge No. 459, whose first organization took place on May 6, 1787. He was appointed a Provincial Grand Master in 1791, and under the authority of African Lodge No. 459, he established African Lodge No. 459 of Philadelphia on March 22, 1797and Hiram Lodge No. 3 in Providence, Rhode Island on June 25, 1797. Of course Prince Hall and many of his fellow Brothers weren’t welcomed with open arms by the other American Lodges, but he did not gracefully bow down and accept that. Instead he pursued other like minded men and warranted other lodges for African Americans. Prince Hal...