To celebrate the 250th anniversary of its inauguration, the Freemason African Lodge No. 459 will symbolically reopen in 2026 to pay tribute to its revolutionary founding members. This lodge, first organized on July 3, 1776, began what would become the oldest and largest Black fraternal organization in the United States.
In 1775, Prince Hall and 14 other free men of color were denied admittance into the then all-white St. John’s Lodge Boston. After being turned away from colonial Freemasonry, this group of men applied and succeeded in becoming masons of a lodge attached to the British Foot Infantry – the first time Black men were made masons in America. However, after the start of the Revolutionary War, this lodge left Boston, leaving Prince Hall and his fellow masons without a place to gather.
Beginning in 1776, this first African Lodge organized and eventually petitioned the Grand Lodge of England for a complete charter in 1784. On September 29, 1784, the lodge was officially inaugurated as “The African Lodge No. 1” (later renamed African Lodge #459), the first official lodge of Black men in America.
With an official charter, African Lodge #459 initiated more members from Boston’s community of free Black men. The original African Lodge #459 was a foundational part of Boston’s Black community, acting as a fraternal organization and mutual aid society for its members. Not only did Prince Hall and the lodge’s founding members build connections between free Black men in post-war Boston, but the lodge also became a cornerstone of activism for racial equality and civil rights. Hall and other members of the African Lodge #459 petitioned the Massachusetts legislature on a series of racial issues, from equal access to education to a ban on slave-trading ships in the port of Boston.
The original lodge proliferated, and in 1791, Prince Hall was made a Provincial Grand Master, organizing additional African Lodges in Philadelphia and Rhode Island. After his death, these African Lodges were renamed in his honor to the Prince Hall Grand Lodge. Today, over 5,000 lodges and 47 grand lodges trace their ancestry back to the original Prince Hall Grand Lodge in Massachusetts. Almost 250 years after the beginning of our nation and African Lodge no. 459, the organization continues to support the rights of Boston’s Black community.
