Prince Hall

Portrait of Prince Hall from the Grand Logde of British Culumbia and Yuko, (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Leader of Boston’s black community and founder of the first African American Masonic lodge in the United States, Prince Hall (1735–1807) regularly petitioned the Massachusetts legislature throughout the 1770s and 1780s to protest slavery and racial discrimination.

Related Resources

Petition over Enslavement of Free Blacks, 1788

Petition over Enslavement of Free Black People, 1788

Protest urging Massachusetts to intervene in the abduction of free Black Bostonians

Supporting Document

Map of Massachusetts, Carl Ernst Bohn, [1796?] (Library of Congress)

Petition for Freedom to the Massachusetts Legislature, 1777

Black petitioners calling on Massachusetts to end slavery

Supporting Document

Petition by the African Lodge of Freemasons, 1787

Black petitioners on being kidnapped from Africa and the possibility of returning to freedom in Africa

Supporting Document