Georgia freemasons at loggerheads over admission of black man to lodge

reply to post by Mintwithahole.


I see your point, but there is no need to combine them. "Recognizing" them may come very soon, and I think it would be beneficial to everyone. It already has come in many states. I wouldn't give up my lodge to combine with theirs, and they don't want to give up their lodge to combine with mine!

It is not just a people or a race issue. International Masons are no particular race, and they are seperate from Free and Accepted, and seperate from Prince Hall.

Many of these lodges are 100's of years old, and their heritage goes back to our founding fathers! A brother Mason of mine has a photo of the minutes of the Masonic meeting where they adjourned early to attend urgent business in the harbor (Boston Tea Party!).

Racism is really a non-issue. It is forbidden by law, it is not commonly practiced without repercussions, and whatever seperation exists is due to tradition and personal preference, not any diabolical plan to exclude anybody!

Originally posted by Mintwithahole.
reply to post by getreadyalready

 

Sorry for the misunderstanding, I thought they were non masons visiting the lodge with an intent on joining.

Still, when alls said and done, the stigma of racism refuses to leave the lodge. There's still this problem with Prince Hall and the normal lodges. . . Why not just unite them and be done with it. It would cut down the administration costs and would remove pricey overheads.
It seems to me that the black guys like their lodge and the whites like theirs, they like being kept apart, seperated because of the colour of their skin, yet they don't see it as racism. To us outsiders its clearly racism (on both sides) but to you masons it's heritage. It's a very strange situation because usually when you mention racism someone is being lorded over and repressed by someone else of a different colour or race. In the case of masonry its more like a friendly mutual mistrust of one another.

It really isn't racism in my eyes though. I agree it can look like that an outsider though. Currently prince hall freemasonry is accepted and recognized in about 80 percent of the states. Some states are just really slow with this stuff, I guess. We are recognized in my state. Back in the 1700s when blacks werent exactly allowed to be masons it was racism. But since then when prince hall was made a master mason and made his own lodge blacks have kind of traditonally chosen prince hall. Prince Hall masons werent really recognized til recently but I don't care the way I look at it I still consider the brothers of the past "real masons". We do everything the same as other masons. I agree with what getready said in the above post, pretty much. And there are masons who are black and aren't prince hall. Atleast here in CA there are, I met 3 the other day as they visited our lodge.

Oh and also in most the world I believe there is no "segregation" or whatever you want to call it in masonry (I think this is true atleast).

Peace



[edit on by jeasahtheseer]