Masonry and Prejudice

by Paul Fisher

Masonry's "Landmarks," have been described by a Craftsman as "those peculiar marks of distinction by which we are separated from the profane world, and by which we are enabled to designate our inheritance as the `Sons of light.' These landmarks are "unrepealable" and "can suffer no change."

Among such inflexible laws of Masonry is Landmark No. 18, which lists qualifications for membership in the Craft. That Landmark says no man can be a Freemason unless he is "unmutilated" and "free-born." It is further stipulated that neither women, slaves, nor one born in slavery, are qualified for initiation into the rites of the Masonic Fraternity.

In that connection, it is interesting to note that Albert Pike, writing of the Aryans who peopled the earth about 10,000 years ago, said:

"They were white men, . . . the superior race in intellect, in manliness, the governing race of the world, the conquering race of all other nations."

Continuing, he asserted: "The single fact that we owe not one single truth, not one idea in philosophy or religion to the Semitic race is, of itself, ample reward for years of study, and it is a fact indisputable, if I read the Veda and Zend Avesta alright."

The Veda is the collection of sacred writings of the Aryans who invaded Northern India in 1500 B.C. The Zend Avesta is a compilation of the sacred writings and commentary thereon of the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia.

In his Lectures on the Arya, Pike noted the Yima (first of all men created, and the first with whom Ahru Mazda conversed) ultimataly lived among people who had perfect stature and "no other marks which are the token of Anra-Mainyus, the Evil Principle, which he has made among men."

Regarding the "other marks," Pike said:

"By which it appears that deformity was considered as a mark put on man by the Evil One; and that Yima selected for his colonists only those in whom there was no physical defect."

Perhaps that Zoroastrian view is responsible for Masons permitting only the "unmutilated" to "colonize" lodges of the Craft, as required by the Fraternity's Landmark 18. Another example of Masonic prejudice was evidenced in a 1928 New Age review of a book, Reforging America by Dr. Lothrop Stoddard. The reviewer said the book's author "clearly demonstrates the necessity of America retaining its racial purity." The reviewer added: "[Tlhe influence of Masonry upon the author's philosophy is evident throughout the volume."

Another article in the official journal of the Scottish Rite concerned the Indians of Mexico and purported to explain why so many revolutions have occurred in that country. The article said:

"The Indian, as such, is superstitious, immobile, a silhouette of stone. He breeds rapidly and would completely overrun the country and dominate by sheer force of numbers were it not for the fact that during each `revolution' hundreds of Indians are killed or die from disease.

"The Indian of today in Mexico is the `leftover', still native and Christian, God-fearing, a superstitious dominated being." [He is part of a structure of ignorance, slavery and servitude . . . under the domination of the Church, whose sole idea was to maintain this servitude and ignorance."

Commenting on the fact that Negro Masons have their own exclusive black Masonic organization, Grand Commander John Cowles explained that "most of the so-called colored Grand Lodges" trace their history to Prince Hall, a Negro who claimed that he was initiated in an English Army Lodge in Boston. Then the Grand Commander noted that "all regular Grand Lodges in the United States do not recognize any colored or Negro Masonry."

Cowles addressed the same subject in 1947, but said it is not "because of their color" that blacks are not allowed into the lodges of "regular" Masonry. Rather, it is "the general characteristics of the race as it exists in this country and the apparent incompatible social reaction of the two races."

The Grand Commander called attention to a photostatic copy of a joint letter in the files of the Supreme Council signed by the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and the Deputy of the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite of the Northern Jurisdiction in Massachusetts, dated February 7, 1925, which allegedly says a black member was expelled from Freemasonry "on the technical ground that he had falsified as to the place of his birth; that . . . [he] had claimed to be an Indian, and that the Grand Lodge had evidence 'amply sufficient to prove that he was not an Indian at all, but a Negro, and other things to his discredit.'"

Cowles said that on one side of the photostatic copy of the Massachusetts Grand Secretary's letter appears the statement: "The Masons could not afford to admit that they had initiated a Negro, so he was expelled upon the technical ground of fraud in naming his birthplace."

In 1976 , a Masonic afflliate organization for girls, the International Order of the Rainbow, suspended all Iowa chapters of the group because one local chapter endorsed membership of a 12-year-old black girl.

According to press reports, Michelle Palmer, whose father is white and mother is black, had been invited to join the Rainbow chapter in Indianola, Iowa, and was approved by the local assembly in October of that year. However, officials at the Rainbow's international headquarters at McAlester, Oklahoma ruled that all 136 Rainbow assemblies in Iowa must disband by the end of the year because they did not follow "rules and regulations."

It was explained that the organization took disciplinary action on the basis of an "unwritten law" which excludes blacks from membership.

Subsequently, it was reported that a majority of the nation's 61 Rainbow assemblies voted to drop the so-called "unwritten law" which banned Negro girls from Rainbow.

This Masonic racism persists to this day in both "regular" Masonry and Prince Hall Masonry, and the issue is rarely questioned in nominations to the judiciary or to other positions in government which require the strictest sense of fairness.

In 1979, The Washington Star carried an article by Robert Pear, the lead paragraph of which read: "Should a federal judge belong to a social club that excludes blacks-or women?

The article went on to note that the question occurred with "embarrassing frequency" in connection with President Jimmy Carter's nominees for federal judgeships, because so many of the candidates belong to racially exclusive "social clubs, eating clubs or other fraternal organizations.

Pear wrote: "The issue of white-only private clubs haunted Attorney General Griffin B. Bell at his confirmation hearings in 1977. He agreed to resign from the Piedmont Driving Club and the Capital City Club in Atlanta because, he said, `the attorney general is so symbolic of equal justice under the law.'"

Of course, even more the symbols of equal justice are the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and the National Women's Political Caucus [NWPC], Pear observed in his Star article, "say judges should not belong to any clubs that discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion or national origin."

Interestingly enough, On May 6, 1983, Vice President George Bush addressed the all-black Prince Hall Grand Masters of Masons, "at the invitation of Benjamin Hooks, president of the NAACP, and a Grand Mason secretary from Tennessee.

Adding insult to injury, the State Supreme Court of New Jersey decided in 1986 that a low-level State-court employee, must step down as an officer of a local NAACP chapter in order to avoid the appearance of judicial involvement in political disputes.

The State Supreme Court also ordered the Monmouth County Superior Court attendant in question to resign from a taxpayers' group , a local mental-health board and four other groups.