Prince Hall

Prince Hall

1748 – 1807. Hall established the African Lodge of the Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons of Boston in 1775. It was the first lodge of black Freemasons in the world. The lodge received a permanent charter from the Grand Lodge of England in 1784. The secret fraternity, which still exists, promoted brotherly love and social, political, and economic improvement for its members.

Hall arrived in Boston in 1765 and was a slave for William Hall. He was freed in 1770, shortly after the Boston Massacre, and worked at a variety of jobs, including as a leather worker for the Boston Regiment of Artillery. He was one of a few black men who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Hall became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and advocated black rights and the abolition of slavery. He opened a school for black children in his home.

Archibald Henry Grimké

Archibald Henry Grimké

Archibald Henry Grimké (August 17, 1849 – February 25, 1930) was an African-American lawyer, intellectual, journalist, diplomat and community leader in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He graduated from freedmen’s schools, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and Harvard Law School, and served as American Consul to the Dominican Republic from 1894 to 1898. He was an activist for the rights of Black Americans, working in Boston and Washington, D.C. He was a national vice-president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as president of its Washington, D.C. chapter.

Grimké was born into slavery on his father’s plantation near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1849.[2] He was the eldest of three sons of Henry W. Grimké, a widower, and Nancy Weston, a very intelligent enslaved woman, crippled in one arm, who had been born into slavery as the daughter of an enslaved African or African-American woman; her father is unknown.[3]: 238  Henry acknowledged his sons, although he neither freed them nor told the rest of his family of their existence. Archibald’s brothers were Francis and John. Henry was a member of a prominent, sizeable family of enslavers in Charleston. His father and relatives were planters active in political and social circles.

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John Brown

John Brown was an American abolitionist, born in Connecticut and raised in Ohio. He felt passionately and violently that he must personally fight to end slavery. In 1856, in retaliation for the sack of Lawrence, he led the murder of five proslavery men on the banks of the Pottawatomie River. He stated that he was an instrument in the hand of God.

Brown did not end there. On Oct. 16, 1859, Brown and 21 followers captured the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Brown planned the takeover as the first step in his liberation of the slaves, but it was taken the next morning by Robert E. Lee.

Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859. He became a martyr for many because of the dignity and sincerity that he displayed during his popular trial.