Prince Hall was born ca. 1735 in Bridgetown, Barbados. Although there are contradictory accounts of his childhood and youth, he seems to have been a slave who migrated to Boston when he was seventeen and was manumitted in 1770. In 1775, he and fourteen other African Americans were initiated into a British army lodge of Freemasons. They were not given full recognition until 1784, although they were allowed to meet and participate in ceremonies. Hall served as a craftsman, and perhaps a soldier, during the Revolutionary War. He began his lifelong campaign for abolition during the war and championed civil rights in other areas, including the provision of free schools for blacks, state funding for emigration to Africa, and restrictions on slave trading and kidnapping in Massachusetts. The Masonic lodge named in his honor was established one year after his death in Boston. It continues to be the largest and best-known African American fraternal order.

John Edward Bruce published Prince Hall, the Pioneer of Negro Masonry: Proofs of the Legitimacy of Prince Hall Masonry in 1921. Bruce's defense of the Prince Hall Masonry is a response to white masons who were questioning the branch's legitimacy. In this short work, Bruce not only seeks to demonstrate Prince Hall's legitimacy but also to expose its critics' inconsistencies.

Work Consulted: Garraty, John A. and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Monique Prince