By Jordan Meadows
Staff Writer
Prince Hall was a Black American abolitionist, educator, and founder of what is today known as Prince Hall Freemasonry. As one of the most influential free Black leaders of the late 18th century, his life was defined by advocacy for freedom in the face of slavery and discrimination.
Much about Hall’s early life is uncertain. He was likely born in Boston. His exact birth year is also unclear, with estimates ranging between 1735 and 1738. There were numerous men named Prince Hall during this era, which has complicated historians' efforts to document his biography. However, the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Massachusetts chose 1738 as his birth year based on a letter from Reverend Jeremy Belknap.
Historians believe Hall was enslaved or in service to Boston tanner William Hall, likely by age 11. Through this connection, he learned the leather trade. Hall gained his freedom by 1770 and was described as literate, self-sufficient, and active in Boston's Black community. Despite the absence of a clear manumission record, he is consistently identified in later documents as a free man.
Hall worked various jobs, including as a leatherworker, peddler, and caterer, and even produced leather drumheads for a Boston artillery regiment in 1777. He also paid taxes, owned property, and appeared on tax rolls for 15 out of the 21 years between 1780 and 1801—making him one of the longest continuously recorded Black residents of Boston at the time.
During the American Revolution, Hall believed that Black participation in the fight for independence could lead to broader freedom for African Americans. He and others compared the plight of Black Americans to the colonists’ struggles under the “Intolerable Acts.” They petitioned the Massachusetts Committee of Safety to allow Black men to enlist.
Despite high hopes, Black veterans were denied equal rights after the war. Hall responded with activism: in January 1777, he submitted a petition to the Massachusetts legislature demanding emancipation, using language drawn directly from the Declaration of Independence—making him the first American to invoke its ideals for a cause beyond rebellion against Britain.
One of Hall’s most enduring contributions was the founding of African American Freemasonry in the United States. Freemasonry promoted ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality—principles that resonated with Hall and other Black men in Boston. But when they petitioned the all-white St. John’s Lodge for membership before the war, they were rejected.
Undeterred, Hall and 14 other free Black men were initiated by members of Lodge No. 441 of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, then attached to British troops stationed in Boston, on March 6, 1775. This led to the creation of African Lodge No. 1, with Hall named at the head.
However, their initial charter only allowed limited privileges. To fully function as a Masonic lodge, they applied to the Grand Lodge of England, which designated them as African Lodge No. 459—the first African Masonic Lodge in the United States. Hall went on to found other lodges, including one in Philadelphia and another in Providence, Rhode Island.
Hall was relentless in challenging slavery and defending free Black citizens. In 1788, he led efforts to fight against the kidnapping of free Black people in Boston—who were being taken aboard ships and sold into slavery in the Caribbean. He petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for protection and publicized the abuses in newspapers across Massachusetts, as well as in Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.
Hall also promoted a Back-to-Africa movement, presenting an emigration petition to the Massachusetts Senate in 1773, along with 73 others. The effort failed.
Education was one of Hall’s deepest commitments. Citing the revolutionary rallying cry of “No taxation without representation,” he petitioned the state for public schools for Black children. Although his proposals were twice rejected, Hall created a private school in his own home, focusing on liberal arts and classical education—an early, self-funded model of Black educational advancement in the United States.
Hall used his speeches and writings to encourage hope and persistence. In one address to the African Masonic Lodge, he declared:
“Let us not be cast down under these and many other cases of abuse we at present labor under: for the darkest is before the break of day...”
Prince Hall died on December 7, 1807, and is buried at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in Boston.
More than 160 years after Hall’s death, his name would become a cornerstone of historic preservation in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1974, the city designated Oakwood as its first Historic Overlay District, a local protection status that preserves the cultural and architectural character of neighborhoods.
In the late 1980s, longtime residents James E. Williams and Edna Rich-Ballentine recognized the historic and cultural value of their neighborhood—a predominantly Black community—and began efforts to preserve it. They approached the City of Raleigh to designate it as a historic district, but those early efforts were stalled due to a lack of resources.
Williams responded by organizing historic home tours to draw attention to the neighborhood's significance. Although formal designation continued to stall through the 1990s, community conversations, and preservation advocacy kept the pressure on. Today, the area is recognized as the Prince Hall Historic District—named in honor of the man whose commitment to justice, education, and civic leadership lives on.
