He was an outspoken contemporary of John Hancock and George Washington, a patriot and a civic leader who organized opposition to slavery and started schools for African-American children. His name is revered among the Masons, of which he was an early leader and loyal member. Yet Prince Hall, who some historians say should be counted among America’s founding fathers, rates scarcely a footnote in most history texts. Nevertheless, some scholars consider him among the most influential men of his generation whose legacy is felt to this day.

“Prince Hall might be the most influential black man who ever lived in this country,” said Red T. Mitchell, a retired insurance executive and history buff from Plainville who is part of a group that has organized to honor Mr. Hall with his own monument in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “He was a patriot, an abolitionist and could be considered the first civil rights organizer.”

Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons is spearheading the effort to install a monument to Mr. Hall on the Cambridge city common, the same place where George Washington once stood at the head of the newly formed Continental Army. The $100,000 monument, funded through private donations, is due to be unveiled on September 12.

Born about 1735, the details of Mr. Hall’s life are mostly a mystery. However, a written statement by Boston leather tanner William Hall shows that Prince Hall was a slave in his possession in the 1740s and the young black man presumably learned his trade from the white Hall. Marriage and other records indicate that Mr. Hall opened a leather goods shop in Boston, as well as a catering business. Other documentation, including petitions sponsored by Mr. Hall, indicate that the ex-slave was at least as politically active as his fellow tradesman, Paul Revere.

Long before the first shots of the Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord, Mr. Hall was already agitating for racial equality. Initially denied membership in a local Masonic order, Mr. Hall and other blacks in Boston asked for and were granted a Masonic charter through British sponsorship. Mr. Hall became the first black accepted into the Masons and the first master of a black lodge. Hall and his supporters weren’t satisfied with merely leveling the playing field within a fraternal organization, however, and presented British colonial Gov. Thomas Gage with a petition demanding the abolition of slavery in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Gov. Gage ignored the request, as did the state Legislature, which referred a subsequent Hall petition to the Continental Congress. Congress ignored the request, too, foreshadowing the Civil War. However, a court ruling in 1788 did bring an end to slavery in Massachusetts.

Long after the Revolution, Mr. Hall campaigned for his own community to make good on the promise in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal. In 1796, he pushed the selectmen of the town of Boston into approving a school for black children who were not welcome in the town’s all-white schools. However, the town fathers welched on their promise and Mr. Hall eventually offered his own home as the first black schoolroom.

Mr. Hall died in 1807, his work for racial equality and civil rights unfinished. But the foundation he laid would become a platform for greater progress under the leadership of civil rights advocates ranging from W.E.B. DuBois to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

H/T From the Libertarian Blog Booker Rising