Academic literature on the topic 'Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Louisiana'

During the late nineteenth century, James Walker Hood was bishop of the North Carolina Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and grand master of the North Carolina Grand Lodge of Prince Hall Masons. In his forty-four years as bishop, half of that time as senior bishop of the denomination, Reverend Hood was instrumental in planting and nurturing his denomination's churches throughout the Carolinas and Virginia. Founder of North Carolina's denominational newspaper and college, author of five books including two histories of the AMEZ Church, appointed assistant superintendent of public instruction and magistrate in his adopted state, Hood's career represented the broad mainstream of black denominational leaders who came to the South from the North during and after the Civil War. Concurrently, Grand Master Hood superintended the southern jurisdiction of the Prince Hall Masonic Grand Lodge of New York and acted as a moving force behind the creation of the region's black Masonic lodges—often founding these secret male societies in the same places as his fledgling churches. At his death in 1918, the Masonic Quarterly Review hailed Hood as “one of the strong pillars of our foundation.” If Bishop Hood's life was indeed, according to his recent biographer, “a prism through which to understand black denominational leadership in the South during the period 1860–1920,” then what does his leadership of both the Prince Hall Lodge and the AMEZ Church tell us about the nexus of fraternal lodges and African American Christianity at the turn of the twentieth century?

This work examines in detail the biography and ideological and political views of Prince Hall, one of the most authoritative and at the same time one of the most mysterious representatives of the black rights movement in the United States. In the course of the analysis, the author dwells in detail on the circumstances of the formation of his socio-political philosophy. He comes to an unambiguous conclusion that it is impossible to attribute the theoretical views of this public figure either to black nationalism or to Pan-Africanism. At the same time, the author acknowledges that the views of the Grand Master of the African Lodge have a number of similarities with both of these ideologies. In particular, Prince Hall adhered to the concept of Ethiopianism and was among the first to put forward the idea of compensating African Americans for the years of slavery and return to the Black Continent. This certainly makes him related to such well-known ideologists of black nationalism as Martin Robison Delany, Henry McNeal Turner, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X. But unlike those listed above, Hall remained a staunch egalitarian, a patriot, and an opponent of violent methods of struggle until the very end of his life, which contradicts this doctrine. In addition, this personage was at the origins of the repatriation movement and black Freemasonry, which earned him his great fame. The great contribution of Prince Hall to the cause of struggle against slavery as well as his place among the first and foremost abolitionists has never been questioned by researchers. At the same time, it had to be pointed out the significant degree of mythologization of the image of the Great Master and his biography which still causes a lot of controversy not only in the academic but also in the political and public community. That is why the work provides a number of versions and interpretations of the “well-known facts” of Hall’s biography. The author exposes them to a detailed critical analysis. In Russian historical science, this study is the first work to offer a critical scholarly interpretation of the biography of Prince Hall, the founder of black Freemasonry and the Back-to-Africa Movement. A number of sources are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.