“It troubles me to no end that whenever I meet a Black man these days, I have to do a little dance about whether he should join our lodge or the Prince Hall one several miles away.” The Senior Steward was a middle-aged man too young to have gone through the agony that was the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. “I just think we need to end this separation of Freemasonry based on the color of a man’s skin right here and now. The whole idea of two separate entities is galling.”
“So which group would you rather disband?” asked The Old Webmaster as he absently leafed through the lodge’s membership register looking for some tidbit of information.
“What do you mean? Neither one, of course!” replied the Senior Steward hastily.
The Old Webmaster turned to face him, leaning on his elbow on the heightened stand which held the book he’d been perusing. “Then how do you propose that we resolve the conundrum? We can’t go back in time and change history so if we’re going to have one body, somebody is going to have to give up their past. Do you want to meld our Grand Lodge into the Prince Hall Grand Lodge or vice versa?”
“I…. Uh…..” And there was nothing more. The Old Webmaster had just said something that he and the others he’d discussed this with the other evening online had not even addressed. They had moaned and griped about some jurisdictions not recognizing Prince Hall, seemingly based on strictly racial lines as shown by a map of the United States wherein the South refused to accept Prince Hall as a regular form of Freemasonry and all of the rest of the country did.
“it’s pretty darn easy to say ‘We’ll recognize them even if they don’t recognize us.’ but that’s pretty hollow in my opinion. And frankly, I wouldn’t be too thrilled if the Rotary or the Lions ‘recognized’ our Grand Lodge as part of their ‘organization’. It’s unwelcome and inappropriate. When people start wringing their hands about this sort of thing, they don’t seem to connect the dots as to their proposals.”
“Yeah, but couldn’t we just say that we think they’re regular Masons and let it go at that?”
“Of course we could.” replied The Old Webmaster. “How magnanimous of us that would be. Telling them what they already know. Seems a bit condescending…. Well, MORE than a bit condescending frankly.”
“But if we could join their lodges and they could join ours….” the Senior Steward’s heart was in the right place but his logic was now being severely tested and he knew it. The Old Webmaster had a penchant for doing just that, he knew.
“You’re forgetting, however, that Prince Hall Masons don’t have dual or plural memberships. They join one lodge and one lodge only. There their friendships are formed and the bonds between them are far greater than amongst our Grand Lodge members. They also have their own ways of doing things. Their meetings are far more religious than ours, often very directly Christian in nature – again, based on their heritage. This would be an anathema to many of our members. Some also have bars to membership so that a potential candidate really has to work to join. It’s FAR different than what we do by stuffing petitions in the hand of even the most causal inquirer. And then there are the ceremonies. I suspect you’ve heard of what improperly goes on in a couple of lodges in our Grand Jurisdiction but you might be even more distressed at some things there. Nevertheless, Prince Hall Grand Lodges WERE regularly formed based on the circumstances of the times and where they are now means – to me at least – that we should always treat them respectfully as Brother Masons. This does NOT, however, mean that we recognize them if they don’t give a fig about it – nor does it mean that we should recognize them if they engage in activities that we would consider highly irregular. A Past Grand Master making a Mason of a man dead for nearly three decades is, for example, one of those things. It will take time – and a refutation of that act, I suspect – in order for the two Grand Jurisdictions in that state to come together.”
The Senior Steward was aghast. Making a dead man a Mason? He just stared….
“There are also cases where a Grand Lodge has issued a ‘blanket’ recognition and yet, only a couple of Prince Hall Grand Lodges have bothered to follow up on it. There are cases where a recognizing Grand Lodge has notified the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of its appointed representative but the notification, made multiple times, has been ignored. The guys who are doing all of this hand-wringing, particularly the ones so vocal on the internet, seem to be blissfully aware of what has transpired either in the past or even currently at their own Grand Lodge.”
“I had no idea….” said the Senior Steward hesitatingly.
“And not everyone does. At least you asked though – while SO many others have failed to do so and have been content to wring their hands like aggrieved, hurt white boys wanting desperately to ‘have a say’ in some sort of righteous movement.”
“You’re old enough to have seen a good chunk of the Civil Rights Movement, aren’t you?” And as he said this, the Senior Steward, for the first time in his memory, watched The Old Webmaster’s crystal blue eyes became cloudy.
There was a long pause.
“Someday I’ll tell you about it.” replied The Old Webmaster as he turned to look out the window at some distant place. The Senior Steward watched him with a growing realization that there was a LOT he needed to think about before he started loudly grousing about this topic again.
Technorati Tags: Freemasonry, Masonic, Prince Hall, recognition, The Old Webmaster
