Draft: Mid Atlantic PCA and ACA, Philadelphia, October 1996

Black Women Freemasons: Gender, Race and Fraternalism in American Society: The ultimate test of social change in America?

by Paul Rich

and Guillermo De Los Reyes

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Dr.Paul Rich and Lic. Guillermo De Los Reyes are Professors of International Relations and History at University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico.

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This is one of a series of papers exploring fraternalism and issues of gender and race, including forthcoming studies by us of Chinese Americans and Freemasonry, Mexican-Americans and Freemasonry, and Jewish Americans and Freemasonry.

At the outset it should be noted that scholars have a terrible time with the pluralism of social movements, often presenting as a single organization what upon investigation is found to be a multiplicity of groups. The history of Freemasonry is an excellent example of the distortion and obfuscation that results. What can be confidently written is that there is not one Masonry but rather many Masonries.

Most academics when writing on something to do with Freemasonry simply do not understand the diversity of Masonic bodies. It is rather like Martians writing about Christianity and lumping Jehovah's Witnesses, Episcopalians and Unitarians together. (So too do white Masonic historians in the United States who wish to deny that from the start American Freemasonry has been a pluralistic movement with black Masonic organizations.)

These problems of analysis of American and indeed worldwide fraternalism are compounded by the secrecy that has enshrouded the affairs of the lodges. The orders were more scrupulous about obeying injunctions not to have the ceremonies recorded or published. However, "...publishers sold exposés to members who needed help in memorizing their parts or to the curious who wished to 'fathom the wonderful secrets of Freemasonry' without paying for an initiation (Richardson's Monitor, p.iv)."

Neither women nor blacks have been welcome in American Masonic lodges. The black lodges claim descent from the activities of an American black lodge organized by a Boston black named Prince Hall. The controversy over how he obtained a charter from Masons in England is too long to go into here.

The centuries running debate over Prince Hall and his followers in Freemasonry, and over whether the Prince Hall tradition confirms the legitimacy of black lodges, is not only fascinating, but relates to the much more general controversies going on about Masonic history and history in general. Can any history be objective and scientific?

When one discusses women and Masonry, the argument is just as heated as when one discusses blacks and Masonry. So black women practicing Freemasonry represent something of record-breaking combination of controversial issues.

Historiographical issues are at the heart of the Prince Hall debate, but they are also at the heart of other Masonic controversies such as that about women. Unfortuantley the Maosns thesemselves have not been very scrupulous about their historical arguments. Since the warranting of Quatuor Corontati Lodge No.2076 by the United Grand Lodge of England in November 1884 as a research institution, some Masonic historians (but by no means all) have battled to contain the myths and fabrications which bedevil accounts of the Craft. Not only do they have to combat the criticisms of those outside the movement who view it as a Satanic conspiracy, but they have to deal with those Masons who prefer fairy tales (often with less than noble motives) to what really transpired.

The arguments ovr the legitimacy of black and women's Masonry relate to a larger problem. History is used shamelessly for suspect motives by politicians, ecclesiastics and just about anyone with a cause. Prince Hall Masons are especially well qualified to comment on this question of impartiality in history, because they have been the victims for decades of those Masonic historians who have wanted desperately to "prove" that black Masonry is bogus and illegitimate. (For that reason perhaps Prince Hall members should be particularly sympathetic to the historical claims of other "irregular" bodies that have embraced minorities, including the Grand Orients and co-Masonry. They are not!)

The irony of white Masonry's claims to brotherhood in the face of the adamancy with which it has remained resolutely segregated has largely been ignored by Masonic scholars, just as the fact that Brother George Washington owned slaves is ignored when his Masonic leadership and high-mindedness is praised. That, as the year 2000 approaches, the matter of Masonic Jim Crowism has finally become a major embarrassment to the white grand lodges in the United States deserves neither gratitude nor commendation, any more than does any other simple act of decency and honesty. It is akin to praising motorists for not running over pedestrians at intersections. Should one really gives awards for members of a moral and altruistic organization actually behaving according to its precepts? In any event, much of the concern and motivation on the part of white Masonic bodies is not over the hypocrisy of running fraternities without brotherhood but rather anxiety about keeping tax exemptions and avoiding scandal in the press that will force members in public service to resign.

That history is used selectively to discredit the role of Prince Hall or to misinterpret the role of women in the lodges should not be surprising. Masonic historiography is not exempt from the prejudices displayed by historians in general. Indeed, it suffers from all the problems in extenso.

In this series, the reader will note the resemblance between female Masonry's difficulties with historians with axes to grind and the difficulties of blacks in Prince Hall Freemasonry in dealing with white Masons.

Is the topic relevant to current academic discussions? Well, it would seem inevitable that if voluntary organizations are seen as an important part of the democratic and civil process, they cannot be exempted from trends in the public arena. They cannot claim to be relevant to today and yet exempt from today's opinions. However, there has been little discussion despite this revival of the effect of these trends on that the Maons as the oldest of voluntary international societies.

The generally held opinion, inside and outside of Freemasonry, is that it is an adamantly male institution, but historically that is arguable. Those who claim, to the intense irritation of some Masons, that women were involved in the very beginnings of Masonry have some (albeit controversial) evidence to sustain their position. There is for example a record from 1408 where newly initiated Masons swore to obey "the Master, or Dame, or any other ruling Freemason". In the records of the Lodge of Mary's Chapel in Edinburgh, dated 1683, the lodge was actually presided over by a Dame or Mistress. The records of the Grand Lodge of York in 1693 speak about male and female initiates.

Admittedly, by the eighteenth century the anecdotes about women Masons take on a decidedly different tone. They are now are interlopers who become Masons by accident and are made members to protect the secrets. A woman who found out the secrets by spying was initiated in a lodge in the English town of Barking in 1714. Another woman who eavesdropped on a lodge ceremony, the Hon. Mrs. Elizabeth Aldworth - the celebrated or infamous daughter of the first Viscount Doneraile - was initiated in 1712 when she was discovered eavesdropping, and the fact is recorded on her tombstone.

There are a number of other ladies in eighteenth-century England who overheard Masonic secrets, hiding in clocks and cupboards, and when found out were initiated. One of them, of Newcastle on Tyne, actually later advertised in the press her willingness to tell the secrets to anyone for a price! Nor were female Freemasons confined to England: in Canada in 1783 a woman who eavesdropped was initiaed in 1783, buried under a tombstone with Masonic symbols, and proudly claimed as an ancestor by a later Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of New Brunswick in 1954.

But, in addition to these interesting stories about women in the late Middle Ages becoming Masons or of curious women being initiated after being rousted out of grandfathers' (or perhaps grandmothers') clocks, there have been and are Masonic-related organizations involving women. They are international in scope and their role, as well indeed of the role of women in what have been regarded as men's secret societies, needs examination in the years ahead. The better known women's groups with Masonic connections include the Order of the Eastern Star, the Rainbow, and the Amaranth, but there are many more.

There are also exclusively women's lodges which work the full Masonic ritual and do not admit men, as well as co-Masonic lodges which admit both men and women. In many cases the male Mason's reception of female Masons is considerably less cordial than the attitude displayed towards orders like the Eastern Star which do not claim to be working the Masonic rituals. Addressing a group of women, an extremely distinguished English Freemason remarked: "When we talk about Women and Freemasonry in Britain we are compelled to discuss the two Orders firmly established here, both claiming that they use the same ritual as their husbands. They wear the same Masonic clothing, and even go so far in copying us that they call each other 'Brother'. Inevitably, they are taboo."

One is tempted to ask "Taboo to whom?" In any event, whether the organizations are secret societies catering to women which have a Masonic connection but do not profess to reveal Masonic secrets, or those which actually confer the Masonic rites on women, attention to these movements involves both the issues of democratization and gender. Research into them is particularly appropriate because there have been changes in society which virtually demand that more attention be paid to these issues by responsible Masons.

The Prince Hall and women's controversies in Masonry converge in the case of blakc women's lodges. This of course has to be relatged to the claims that democracy and voluntary associations are linked, as is responsibility and society. The worldwide significance of the discussion is apparent when Fukuyama claims that those nations where social trust prevails will prosper far more than those where such trust is lacking. This social trust is largely manufactured by the voluntary societies that create civil society. In respects, Fukuyama is a modern-day de Tocqueville, a cicerone who like him appreciates the importance of non-government groups. De Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America:

In the United States, political associations are only one small part of the immense number of different types of associations found there. Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types - religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute...In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association.

This 'discovery' of the role of voluntary groups has been anticipated - for instance by the work of Margaret Jacob of the University of Pennsylvania, just a few minutes from here, in studying the influence of eighteenth-century Masonic lodges. It seems appropriate to this discussion that the principal living historian of European Freemasonry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is a woman. Jacob argues that, "Modern civil society was invented during the Enlightenment, in the new enclaves of sociability of which freemasonry was the most avowedly constitutional and aggressively civic. The nature of masonic sociability has not been understood because historians have seldom looked at actual masonic practices." She believes that, "In the final analysis freemasonry, for all of its exclusivity, secrecy, and gender bias, transmitted and textured the Enlightenment, translated all the cultural vocabularies of its members into a shared and common experience that was civil and hence political."

So, as she indicates, the influence of voluntary organizations on political life and on gender issues (pace, race issues) needs to be thoroughly examined and it is crucial that Masons be able to contribute to the debate rather than sit on the sidelines. Perhaps, as some suggest, voluntary associations are a mainstay of democracy. But that is not always obvious or universal. Ironically, in the Latin American situation the contributions of such voluntary groups as are obviously powerful, good examples being Freemasonry and Opus Dei, are difficult to credit with the creation of the open society. Their activities do not support the Fukuyama thesis about an intermediate zone of voluntary societies between family and state that promote democracy, whatever the effects of other groups. Nor does the dismal record of white Maons in treating black and women would-be brothers and sisters. Study of volunteerism's efficacy is obviously going to be on a group-by-group and country-by-country basis.

Having consideredthe place of voluntary associations in a democracy, one has to ask about the involvement of women and blacks in these movements. Unquestionably Freemasonry and kindred societies played a major role in the life of the American male. But how about women and Freemasonry in a modern context, and not just concealed in clocks?

Mainstream Masons in the last two centuries have been resolute in keeping women out of the lodge. Masonry was interpreted - or, in our opinion, reinterpreted - as masculinity par excellence. This was apparent even in the lodge furniture. Studying Masonic lodge rooms, William D. Moore writes:

...while traditional social structures were attacked by liberal theology and the changes wrought by industrial capitalism, the Masonic lodge room through its use of furnishings and ritual continued to express order and masculinity in an understandable manner. As corporate identity fell in the surrounding culture, lodge furnishings continued to emphasize the site where members were obligated. The lodge room then can be understood as a place in which masculine values which were disappearing in the outside world were preserved. It was a theater in which millions of American men entertained each other by acting out morality plays, and a hallowed space where the same men found spiritual meaning and perpetuated what they unconsciously recognized as a disappearing social order.

However, Masonry has never been quite so completely the redoubt of male chauvinism that some of its critics claim. For real red-meat male chauvinism, one must look at the work of a popular contemporary writer such as Robert Bly, who writes, "There is male initiation, female initiation, and human initiation....We have defective mythologies that ignore masculine depth of feeling, assign men a place in the sky instead of earth, teach obedience to the wrong powers, work to keep men boys, and entangle both men and women in systems of industrial domination that exclude both matriarchy and patriarchy."

Not everyone would agree with Bly that what the world needs is to free the male ego through uninhibated ho-ho-ho old boy initiation ceremonies. Mary Ingham in her book Men: The Male Myth Exposed, thinks that the male search for risk "stems largely from insecurity, the need to try and prove that they are male and that they are strong, because they lack the inner ego strength to feel it." As far as she is concerned, the end result is to "add another layer of insensitivity". In her view, "one of the most hopeful signs of the times is a father's recent description of holding his child for the first time: 'It felt fantastic - the closest to being female.' " She adds that men, "...have got to shatter the myth of masculinity which stifles their expression of their real needs."

Bly asserts that American salvation is via male ritual, that "The ancient practice of initiation then - still very much alive in our genetic structure - offers a third way through, between the two 'natural' roads of manic excitement and victim excitement. A mentor or 'male mother' enters the landscape. Behind him, a being of impersonal intensity stands, which in our story is the Wild Man, or Iron John." Much nonsense like this is being written today about male initiation and bonding. In The New York Times, Professor Hal Foster of Cornell University has described this development as "celebration of the masochistic man" and relates it to the growth of "the cult of abjection" with an oscillation between sensitivity and sadism, adding "God save the women who get caught in between."

It does seem that a corollary to the new male ritualism is more than a few cases is a viciously reactionary male chavinism that would see that women are again relegated to the kitchen, de facto deprived of their civil rights. Those who think gender has become an obvious civil right sissue will be surprised to learn how, once again, at least according to Martin Green in The Adventurous Male (1993), "politics is a male group phenomenon" and that "Seymour Lipset's Political Man naturally deals with men and not with women". The authors know Dr. Lipset, a friend, and hasten to add that he is not a chauvinist, whatever Mr. Green is.

. A point which needs emphasis is that while fraternal lodges were certainly involved in male initiation and white male bonding, they have also involved women and black women. Moreover, the Masons see their rites as opening the door to philosophic and intellectual knowledge, teachings which contrast with the primeval male knowledge that Bly wishes to impart. His successful initiate "increases his tolerance for ashes, eats dust as snakes do, increases his stomach for terrifying insights, deepens his ability to digest the evil facts of history, accepts the job of working seven years under the ground, leaves the granary at will through the rat's hole, bites on cinders, learns to shudder, and follows the voice of the old mole below the ground."

Masons are not all yahoos and good old boys and we would not conclude by leaving that impression. Discussion of the place of women and blacks viz the oldline white grand lodges is at an alltime high. While mainstream Masonry in America remains a male and white organization, Masonry is not an expression of a rude and crude male chavinism and racism as so many of the male movements were or even are. Freemasonry displays considerable evidence of its Enlightenment roots In the initiation there are injunctions to temperance and prudence, along with the imparting of considerable esoteric knowledge. When that is considered in conjunction with the usually elaborate lodge room where the degree is communicated, and the fact that the officers often are in formal dress, one sees that there is considerable residual sophistication.

in ways, the ultimate test of the American society will be when blakc women Masons are freely accepted by their white male counterparts. Then one will be able to say that old prejudices have truly expired.