Worldwide, there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 Masonic grand lodges, each with slightly different traditions, rules, and eligibility criteria. Members of each order consider themselves Freemasons. All of them, however, are barred from visiting or even associating with lodges in jurisdictions that are not recognized by their own. As is often the case with a 300-year-old fraternity, the devil is in the details. 

On May 18, 1991, there were lots of details to work through. 

It was on that date, in a room at the Oakland Airport Hilton, that the first formal meeting between the Grand Lodge of California and the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of California took place. With that, what would become a years-long process was launched to establish the framework for a historic pact. One of the first issues the groups faced was also the most significant: historical precedent. Since before the founding of the Grand Lodge of California in 1850, Masonic grand lodges throughout the country had subscribed to a concept called the American doctrine. Put simply, this established that only one grand lodge could claim jurisdiction over a given territory, and that any other grand lodge working there would be considered persona non grata (or, in the parlance of the time, “clandestine”). Even if a grand lodge wanted to recognize another group within its borders, the American doctrine didn’t allow it. “It was considered a bedrock principle,” explains Past Grand Master John L. Cooper II. 

The aim was to impose order on what had become, in certain places during the 19th century, a Masonic free-for-all. The various lodges in a single town might be connected to any number of foreign countries, each of which had its own rules and traditions—and all competing for the same members. To those early Masonic leaders, the very structure and reputation of Freemasonry seemed to be at stake. The American doctrine established a jurisdictional claim in each state. But it also had the effect of marginalizing a great number of Masons—including, in the case of Prince Hall Masonry, many people of color. 

Freemasonry has always stipulated that membership cannot be closed to any qualified prospect on the basis of race or creed. Yet, over the past 200 years, the fraternity has reproduced many of the same patterns of discrimination and segregation seen elsewhere in society. Reports from the early and mid-20th century in the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of California frequently distinguish between “white Masonry” and “colored” or “Negro” lodges. A report on Prince Hall Masonry published in the 1946 Proceedings, summarizing correspondence from North Carolina, read, “The several Grand Lodges of the United States almost without exception limit their membership to the white race.” 

The result in many states, including California, was a sort of parallel system, in which the mainstream grand lodge could not and would not formally recognize its Prince Hall counterpart. But neither did it make overt attempts to shut it down. In 1930, the Proceedings referred to Prince Hall Masonry as “quasi-legitimate,” and having “a sort of qualified standing with our Grand Lodge.” By 1938, it stated that Prince Hall Masonry should be “generally termed ‘irregular’ rather than ‘clandestine’ ”—perhaps a semantic difference but also an olive branch. 

In 1931, regarding Prince Hall lodges in California, a Grand Lodge report stated that, in fact, “They have been unofficially aided in various ways by officers of the Grand Lodge of California, though no recognition has been or can be extended to them either as a Masonic body or individually.” In 1936, as a show of “cordial feelings” between the two grand lodges, Prince Hall Grand Master Theodore Moss gifted a copy of his organization’s proceedings dating back to 1904 to the Masonic Library of Southern California. “Relations between this Grand Lodge and the white Masons of the state [are] as close as same could be without recognition, and apparently that relationship is satisfactory to both sides,” he said.