Make Prince Hall a Founding Father

Whereas:
From the moment of his manumission in 1770, shortly after the Boston Massacre, where the first blood was shed for Independence, Prince Hall began his struggle for the freedom of all men and,

Whereas:
Seeing the need to organize the freed Blacks and to develop a forum for understanding and communication among all men, he became the Founder of the first fraternity of Black Freemasons in America, and

Whereas:
“Prince Hall, an African and a person of great influence among his color in Great Boston, being the Master of the African Lodge and a person to whom they refer with Confidence their principal affairs”, spoke for those who had no position of power. He led the efforts to allow Black men to enlist in the Continental Army, that they too, as John Hancock suggested, “could gain their freedom with their swords” and

Whereas:
In the role as one of the first civil rights leaders in America, he created the first school organized by Black citizens for Black children, petitioned the Great and General Court of Massachusetts to end slavery, and advocated for the return of Black seamen being sold into slavery, and

Whereas:
In a speech he gave in Cambridge, (Menotomy) in 1797, declaring it is the internal, and not the external characteristics by which men should be judged, he stated, “Give the right hand of affection and fellowship to whom it justly belongs; let their color and complexion be what it will, let their nation be what it may, for they are your brethren”, and

Whereas:
Prince Hall symbolizes all those nameless, faceless and forgotten Patriots, Black men and women of the revolutionary period throughout the thirteen colonies, who sacrificed their lives for the furtherance of freedom in this nation but were denied full participation in its society based solely on the color of their skin, and

Whereas:
By the exemplary life he led, not only influenced self-improvement and better race relations in his day, but his influence has continued over 200 years since his death in 1807 to this day, through those who call themselves Prince Hall Masons, fighting in every war in which this nation has been involved, and in leadership positions in what is known as the Civil Rights movement, and

Whereas:
Within our day, we have achieved recognition among the World Wide Order of all Regular Freemasons, the election of ah African-American President, and Prince Hall declared a Founding Father of the United States, representing the Black patriots of the Revolutionary period, by the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Ground-breaking on the Cambridge Common, the official birthplace of the United States Army, for a memorial to his memory.