In 1770s Boston, colonists demanded liberty while denying it to their Black neighbors. Prince Hall, freed around 1770, challenged that contradiction and built institutions of his own. This episode traces the life of the civil rights pioneer remembered as the founder of Black Freemasonry in the United States.

We look at the uncertain records of his birth and early life, his trade as a leather worker, and his petitions to let Black men serve in the Revolutionary War. We then follow how he was initiated through a British military lodge, secured a charter for African Lodge No. 459, opened a school in his own home, and spoke out against kidnapping and slavery.

• Why so little is known about Prince Hall’s birth and early life, and why the Barbados theory was debunked
• How the Revolutionary War shifted policy on Black enlistment after Dunmore’s Proclamation
• How Hall and other free Black men were initiated through Lodge No. 441 and later chartered African Lodge No. 459
• His campaigns for education, against the kidnapping of free Black Bostonians, and in praise of the Haitian Revolution
• His modest estate and the growth of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge after his death