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Prince Hall (1735-1807), was a prominent member of the Masonic Order. He was born in slavery and after some years he was freed. He considered it the duty of Masons, as he put it in ‘A Charge Delivered to the African Lodge, June 24, 1797, at Monotony (1797) to show “love to all mankind”. He advises sympathizing with our fellow free blacks under their troubles’.
Prince Hall was the author of numerous petitions on behalf of the Masons and the free blacks in general for support of plans for the blacks to immigrate to Africa and for public education for children of tax paying black people. He was a strong opponent of the Slavery, in one of his 1788 petitions, he asks for the emancipation of ‘a great number of Negroes who were detained in a state of Slavery in the Bowels of a free and Christian country’. Hall was tireless in his support of any scheme intended to advance the cause of the black freedom and equality and also in supporting any advancing cause for Black Freedom and equality. He was also acutely aware of how different were the futures of the different races in “this nad of Liberty”. In his writing or speech, he was never reluctant to use republican as well as biblical rhetoric to point that difference out.