Intended for the Better Government of Man
The Political History of African American Freemasonry in the Era of Emancipation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5704759 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen Kantrowitz (corresponding author), Kantrowitz |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 96 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 1001-1026 |
| Publication date | 2010-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/96.4.1001 |
| OpenAlex | W2316110368 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
In 1848 Frederick Douglass chastised black northerners for showing more devotion to fraternal orders than to political organization against slavery and caste. “If we put forth a call for a National Convention, for the purpose of considering our wrongs, and asserting our rights,” he complained, “we shall bring together about fifty, but if we call a grand celebration of odd-fellowship, or free-masonry, we shall assemble ... from four to five thousand.” The time and money men invested in these “glittering follies of artificial display,” he asserted, would be better spent “holding public meetings, putting forth addresses, passing resolutions, and in various other ways making their wishes known to the world.” Worse, Douglass explained, the fraternal orders attracted “some of the best and brightest among us,” “contenting” them, “swallowing up their energies ... and indisposing them to seek for solid and important realities.” These groups' exclusion of women cast further doubt on their adherents' commitment to “doing that which is right.” Freemasons donned elaborate regalia, performed secret rites of passage, and emerged from their increasingly elaborate lodge buildings to parade, celebrate, and bury their dead. But they did not, in Douglass's view, contribute to the political work of establishing rights and redressing wrongs.1
CONTEST · Emancipation · Government (linguistics · Parade · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society
Romantic Reformers and the Antislavery Struggle in the Civil War Era
A Critical Review Essay of Walker, Corey
A social network analysis of early twentieth-century elite Black male civil society
The Dialectic of Representation
The fraternal Atlantic
Brothers in exile
The Retreats of Reconstruction
Black Cosmopolitans
| Citations per year | 0.57 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2024 (13) |
| Highly cited | No |