Freemasonry's History of Racism

Klan and Black Legion meetings were usually held inside Masonic Temples and Halls in the Midwest during the 1930's. The Klan recruited almost exclusively from within Masonic ranks and often the membership of both organizations was indistinguishable. All of the Leadership of the old and new Klan were high degree Freemasons. The Ku Klux Klan was in fact a Masonic movement.

The Brotherhood and Racism

The book "Christianity and American Freemasonry" by William J. Whalen (Our Sunday Visitor:1987, pgs 23-25) discusses the racism of Freemasonry at some length;

An organization dedicated to brotherhood, Masonry ironically remains a bulwark of racial segregation in the United States. By 1987, decades after most American institutions had accepted racial integration, only four of the forty-nine Grand Lodges could count even one black member in their jurisdictions. As the author of a recent scholarly study of black Freemasonry observes, "The legitimation of social intermingling between black and white Masons has remained anathema in mainstream Freemasonry."' (Handbook of Secret Organizations by Whalen)

A lodge within the British military forces initiated Prince Hall with fourteen free black men in 1775 after the men had been rebuffed in their attempt to join St. John's lodge in Boston. Eventually the black Masons received a charter from the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England for African Lodge No. 459 (1784). Regular Masonry has continued to deny recognition to Prince Hall lodges, and individual lodges have barred black candidates by the simple method of the black cube.

Except for one curious exception, Alpha Lodge No. 1 16 in New Jersey, and a handful of blacks reported to be initiated by lodges in New York and Massachusetts, regular Freemasonry remains ninety-nine and forty-four hundredths percent white. A Prince Hall Mason may not visit a white lodge, nor a white Mason visit a Prince Hall lodge, without risking Masonic punishment. Albert Pike, no friend of blacks, admitted in 1875 "Prince Hall lodge was as regular a lodge as any lodge created by competent authority. It had a perfect right to establish other lodges and make itself a Mother Lodge."

When the Grand Lodge of New Jersey accepted several blacks into membership, other Grand Lodges decried the action and some severed fraternal relations with New Jersey. Mississippi was one. The Grand Master of that state wrote in 1908 "Masonry never contemplated that her privileges should be extended to a race, totally, morally and intellectually incapacitated to discharge the obligations which they assume or have conferred upon them in a Masonic lodge. It is no answer that there are exceptions to this general character of the race. We legislate for the race and not for the exceptions. We hold that affiliation with negroes is contrary to the teachings of Masonry, and is dangerous to the interest of the Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons."

The Prince Hall lodges include a number of distinguished gentlemen on their rosters such as Supreme Court Justice Marshall, Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles, Dr. Benjamin Hooks of the NAACP, Mayor Andrew Young of Atlanta, and Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit. Of course, none of these black Masons would be allowed to visit a white Masonic lodge.

Whether Masonry influenced Southern mores or was simply influenced itself is hard to determine. Even during the civil-rights battles of the 1960s, knowledgeable blacks discovered that many of the leaders of the segregationist movement, such as Governors George Wallace of Alabama, Orval Faubus of Arkansas, and Ross Barnett of Mississippi, were also active Masons.