Mississippi Lodge Partners With Local Developer To Save Historic Hall

A month can't go by without a story appearing about the loss of another significant Masonic hall or temple. But every once in a while, I get positive messages like this one. WB Matthew Farmer, Worshipful Master of Abert Lodge 89 in Starkville, Mississippi writes, "To all those whose historic Lodges are being sold or mismanaged, the potential is there, expand your minds and look at all opportunities..."

Our lodge has partnered with a local historic developer to completely renovate our lodge to it's historic glory. It will be a $1.2 million renovation to keep and improve our historical status in this city. Our lodge hosted the Rex Theater downstairs in the '20s. The Rex Theater was the first building in Starkville to receive air-conditioning.

This project will not cost the lodge a dime. (besides increased insurance and tax of course), but it otherwise ensures that the entire building will be around and in "lodge" hands for a while. We have signed a 55-year lease with the developer ensuring income for the lodge, more than accounting for inflation.

From a February 25th story on the WTVA website:

Mark Castleberry, a property developer in the Golden Triangle and owner of Castle Properties, partnered with local business, Glo, and the Masonic Lodge to restore the Rex Theater. The building is located on West Main Street.

He plans to transform the former theater into an office space for Glo. Glo sells liquid-activated, light-up cubes that are designed to be placed into drinks for a colorful sip.

[snip]

The redevelopment of Rex Theater will provide a larger space for the business to operate.

The Starkville Masonic Lodge has occupied the property for more than 100 years. A fire destroyed the first building in 1929. When it was rebuilt in 1931, the theater was constructed on the first floor.

Castleberry plans to work with the National Parks Service and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to maintain the property’s historic integrity.

Prince Hall Recognition - Is Mississippi Next?

MW Jason A. Jefcoat, Grand Master of the
Grand Lodge of Mississippi F&AM

(UPDATE: This story was previously posted with an incorrect photo that showed Brother Maurice F. Lucas, JUNIOR instead of MW Maurice F. Lucas, SENIOR, who is the Grand Master of the Stringer Grand Lodge of Mississippi (PHA). That corrected photo has been updated below. My apologies for the error, which was mine entirely.)

The historical segregation between the predominantly white "mainstream" Masons and African-American Prince Hall grand lodges in the American South continues to mosey its way to the well-deserved tar pits. While this post is a little less timely than it probably should have been, I wanted to wait a few more days before circulating it.  

Mississippi's "mainstream" and Prince Hall Scottish Rite Masons
were represented at the Scottish Rite in Memphis last week.
The world did not stop spinning on its axis.

The news from last week about the Memphis (TN) Valley of the Scottish Rite and their Prince Hall Affiliated counterparts cooperating wasn't just confined to Tennessee's Masons. As reported, Mississippi had representatives from their own Scottish Rite bodies - "mainstream" and Prince Hall - attending as well. But there's a little more to the story out of Mississippi. 

Back on September 27th, Mississippi's Grand Master, MW Jason A. Jefcoat posted the following message on the Grand Lodge of Mississippi's official Facebook page:

Brethren,
Not long after I was installed as your Grand Master I received an invitation and a request from the Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Stringer Grand Lodge of Mississippi F&AM, Prince Hall Affiliated for a meeting to discuss the possibility of some type of mutual recognition. As your newly installed Grand Master, with what I still consider an extremely important agenda and a very full schedule, I dismissed this invitation.

Five months later while I was representing our State at the Scottish Rite Biennial Session, I was given the opportunity to meet Brothers from all over the world. In some of these conversations the topic of Prince Hall Masons was discussed. I was made aware of some future events concerning Prince Hall Masonry and our counterparts in the Southeastern Masonic Conference. I talked with Grand Masters whose States have recognized Prince Hall Masons for decades, and I talked to Grand Master whose States are voting on this topic in the very near future. There was a lot of talking, but for once in my life I kept my mouth shut and listened.

Because I know how strongly some of our Brothers feel about this topic, I took my burden to God. I considered the consequences and benefits of what some type of recognition would mean for Mississippi, and I asked Him for help.

Within 24 hours I received a phone call from Grand Master Most Worshipful Brother Maurice Lucas, Most Worshipful Stringer Grand Lodge, Prince Hall Affiliate. I immediately accepted his invitation for lunch the next week. The following is a result of our meeting. The request has been turned over to the Fraternal Relations Committee, and will be presented for a vote at our next Annual Communication.

MW Maurice F. Lucas, Sr.
Grand Master of Stringer GL of Mississippi (PHA)

The letter GM Jefcoat posted was an official written request by MW Maurice F. Lucas, Sr., the Grand Master of the MW Stringer Grand Lodge of Mississippi F&AM (the regular Prince Hall Affiliated grand lodge in that state - see footnote) to discuss joint recognition and arrange a treaty of amity to share concurrent jurisdiction in Mississippi:

Click image to enlarge

Part of the thing that frustrates new and old Masons alike is the glacial speed with which the fraternity operates, especially when topics like recognition arise. When annual meetings are required to make changes, and simple yes/no decisions to proceed or not are measured in years instead of days or minutes, it's easy to assume nothing is happening. 

So.

What this all means to the uninitiated or the frustrated is that Mississippi's Prince Hall (PHA) Masons will be voting on whether or not proceed with this official request at THEIR next annual communication. THEN the Grand Lodge of Mississippi F&AM will take up the question. Presuming both pass the votes, THEN the two grand lodges will officially meet to hammer out details. THEN the two grand lodges will have to both ratify the agreements. And all of this presupposes that both bodies of historically entrenched Masons even agree to undertake any of this in the first place.

All of this creaky back and forth seemed normal in the 18th and 19th centuries when these types of processes were worked out. Unfortunately, when it comes to potentially controversial topics like anything involving race and the American South, the rest of the world can't refrain from hurling accusations and insults south of the Mason-Dixon Line. This isn't an apologia for this longstanding wall between Freemasons there, but let's give fair-minded Masons the proper opportunity to finally solve it at long last. If they do, this map may be changing again sooner than later.

*Just a note for clarity: since after the Civil War, Prince Hall Freemasonry has long been most active and widespread in the American South. If you don't know the history of the National Compact era and the battles between PHA (Prince Hall Affiliated) grand lodges versus the former Compact-era PHO (Prince Hall Origin) grand lodges, this blog can't really do that justice in a short space. If you read online arguments between Masons on both sides, you might see them calling each other "three-letter" or "four-letter" Masons (F&AM vs the Compact's AF&AM). In some states, the early- to mid-20th century attempt to standardize all PHA grand lodge names by changing to "The Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of [your state here], F&AM" was frustrated by legal counter-claims over corporate entity names on a state by state basis. 

Consequently, Mississippi's PHA grand lodge is officially named the "Most Worshipful Stringer Grand Lodge of Mississippi F&AM." The Compact-era's PHO grand lodge got to the courthouse first, so it snagged the simpler name .

For related reasons Florida's ungainly regular, recognized PHA name is the "Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge Most Ancient and Honorable Fraternity F&AM PHA Florida & Belize, Central America Jurisdiction, Inc."

'What Treasures Does Your Lodge Hold?'

This little essay was posted on the Grand Lodge of Mississippi's Facebook page from WB Rick Clifton, Past Master of Bay Springs Lodge 167:

What Treasures Does Your Lodge Hold?

When Minute Books of fifty of the oldest American Lodges as of the period between 1800 and 1825 are compared with the Minute Books of the same Lodges as of the period 1900 to 1925 it will be discovered that the subject of the Lodge inventory was somewhere lost, abandoned, forgotten in the years between. Every so often in the early days a Secretary, with loving care, and often with an openly expressed pride, wrote out his inventory; and such inventories are for us now one of the best sources for a knowledge of what Lodge life was a century and a half ago. Those inventories coincidentally make vivid and clear one thing wrong with Lodge life now— something lost out of Masonry, like the Lost Word, an old Landmark unintentionally violated; a thing lost though not necessarily beyond recall.

The inventory was not of the carpets, walls, windows, or other structural equipment, nor was it for real estate or taxation or fire insurance purposes; it was an inventory of the treasures of the Lodge. In almost every instance each item was described as a gift from some Brother, or as a memento of some occasion long remembered; there were oil portraits, framed prints, photographs; jewels kept in cases, of silver, and engraved, once the property of officers who later had presented them to the Lodge; aprons, collars, ballot boxes, gavels, Bibles and books, music books, an organ, sets of plate, glass and dishes, altar coverings, certificates, cherished letters in frames, punch bowls There were gifts which the Lodge had made to itself, such as hand-made carved chairs for the officers or a visitors' book bound in morocco. The Lodge Room had a feeling of being richly furnished; it was filled with the emblems and symbols of Freemasonry, of the Lodge's own past, of the community's esteem for it, and that the members who had gone were not completely gone.

Men loved their Lodge, and because they did there was no need to devise schemes for persuading them to attend.

In every Lodge, even the crassest, there are these untapped feelings of affection. Each one should have an inventory. When a Lodge room is empty, its walls bare, it has no atmosphere of its own. It does not feel like home. The Ritual loses its soul because it has not the environment it requires.

The worst effect of the bare Lodge room is that its Masonry in turn becomes barren because the Lodge has only the sense of being in a room and does not have a sense of being in the midst of a living and moving Fraternity; nor can it have a sense of its own past, or the Fraternity's past, but sinks into a feeling of isolation and flatness—it cannot even have a banquet because it has nothing to have it with. The inventory was one of riches; the riches came not out of the members' dues but out of their affection.

Rick Clifton, PM

Bay Springs #167

WB Clifton's thoughtful piece echoes a passage that H. L. Haywood wrote in his 1948 book 'More About Masonry,' and it can't be over-stated:

"In the Eighteenth Century Lodges the Feast bulked so large in the lodge that in many of them the members were seated at the table when the lodges were opened and remained at it throughout the Communication, even when the degrees were conferred. The result was that Masonic fellowship was good fellowship in it, as in a warm and fruitful soil, acquaintanceship, friendship, and affection could flourish - there was no grim and silent sitting on a bench, staring across at a wall. Out of this festal spirit flowered the love which Masons had for their lodge. They brought gifts to it, and only by reading of old inventories can any present day Mason measure the extent of that love; there were gifts of chairs, tables, altars, pedestals, tapestries, draperies, silver, candle-sticks, oil paintings, libraries, Bibles, mementos, curios, regalia’s and portraits. The lodge was a home, warm, comfortable, luxurious, full of memories, and tokens, and affection, and even if a member died his, presence was never wholly absent; to such a lodge no member went grudgingly, nor had to be coaxed, nor was moved by that ghastly, cold thing called a sense of duty, but went as if drawn by a magnet, and counted the days until he could go.

"What business has any lodge to be nothing but a machine for grinding out the work: It was not called into existence in order to have the minutes read: Even a mystic tie will snap under the strain of cheerlessness, repetition, monotony, dullness. A lodge needs a fire lighted in it, and the only way to have that warmth is to restore the lodge Feast, because when it is restored, good fellowship and brotherly love will follow, and where good fellowship is, members will fill up an empty room not only with themselves but also with their gifts."

What business, indeed...