ALEXANDRIA, Va., 13th September, 1875.
MY DEAR FRIEND AND BROTHER.-I can see as plainly as you that the negro question is going to make trouble. There are plenty of regular negro Masons and negro lodges in South America and the West Indies, and our folks only stave off the question by saying that negro Masons here are clandestine. Prince Hall Lodge was as regular a Lodge as any lodge created by competent authority, and had a perfect right (as other lodge in Europe did) to establish other lodges, making itself a mother Lodge. That's the way the Berlin lodges, Three Globes and Royal York, became Grand Lodges.
The Grand Orient of Hayti is as regular as any other. So is the Grand Orient of the Dominican Republic, which, I dare say, has negroes in it and negro lodges under it.
Again, if the negro lodges are not regular, they can easily get regularized. If our Grand Lodges won't recognize negro lodges, they have the right to go elsewhere. The Grand Lodge can't say to eight or more Masons, black or white, we will not give you a charter because you are negroes, or because you wish to work the Scottish Rite, and you shall not go elsewhere to get one: That latter part is bosh.
Hamburg recognizes the Grand Lodges. Yes, and so the German Grand Lodge Confederation is going to do, and so will the Grand Orient of France before long.
Of course, if negrophily continues to be the religion established by law of your State, there will be before long somewhere a beginning of recognition of negro lodges. Then the Royal Arch and Templar bodies of negroes must be taken in, and Masonry go down to their level. Will your plan work? I think not. I think there is no middle ground between rigid exclusion of negroes or recognition and affiliation with the whole mass.
If they are not Masons, how protect them as such or at all? If they are Masons, how deny them affiliation or have two supreme powers in one jurisdiction.
I am not inclined to meddle in the matter. I took my obligations to white men, not to negroes. When I have to accept negroes as brothers or leave Masonry, I shall leave it.
I am interested to keep the Ancient and Accepted Rite uncontaminated, in our country at least, by the leprosy of negro association. Our Supreme Council can defend its jurisdiction, and it is the law-maker. There can not be a lawful body of that Rite in our jurisdiction unless it is created by us.
I am not so sure that, what with immensity of numbers, want of a purpose worth laboring for, general indifference to obligations, pitiful charity and large expenses, fuss, feathers and fandango, big temples and large debts, Masonry is become a great helpless, inert mass that will some day, before long, topple over, and go under. If you wish it should, I think you can hasten the catastrophe by urging a protectorate of the negroes. Better let the thing drift. Apres nous le deluge.
Truly, yours,
ALBERT PIKE
