>>519563012
>"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 Haiti 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