On March 25, 1901, Paul Laurence Dunbar was in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was a guest of the poet James Weldon Johnson. While there, Paul decided to join the Masonic Lodge, and he carried on an amusing correspondence about the experience with his wife Alice in Washington, D. C.
I have a chance to be made a master Mason down here for $12.50, half what I could be made for there in Washington. I can then be transferred there. What do you say? Write at once or wire. It is to be on Friday night.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Alice Moore Dunbar, March 25, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
Florida seems to be doing nothing for me and both throat and lungs are very sore and painful. My cough is bad and altogether I am very depressed and discouraged. I have been drinking moderately, but if I get through my initiation tonight I feel like getting like a boiled owl.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Alice Moore Dunbar, March 29, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
Well, you are a Mason now and quite a great man, I suppose. I hope you rode the goat and climbed the greased pole with sufficient dignity and that you won't be so dreadfully stuck up when you come home.
Alice Moore Dunbar to Paul Laurence Dunbar, March 30, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
Well dear, at last I am a Mason and a pretty sore and tired one at that, but glad to be through it. They would have killed me in Washington, but a certain awe of my mysterious greatness made them handle me less roughly than the others and my name was a certain protection.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Alice Moore Dunbar, March 30, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
I am glad that you behaved nicely Friday night and did not howl very much when the goat butted you. I suppose I am a Mason's wife now and can hold my head up with the rest of the "sisters."
Alice Moore Dunbar to Paul Laurence Dunbar, April 1, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
I have been feeling quite good, but was out late to lodge last night and my cough is back and my throat bad again. What do you suppose those Masons have done? They have named the new lodge, now the finest in the state of Florida, the Paul Laurence Dunbar Lodge. Whew! It will take much to get the swelling out of my head when I get back to Washington.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Alice Moore Dunbar, April 11, 1901. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 8).
Years later in his autobiography, James Weldon Johnson recalled the night he and Paul were initiated into the Masonic Lodge.
He always spoke of his stay in Jacksonville in high terms. Before he left, the Negro Masons decided to organize a lodge of young men, and name it the Paul Laurence Dunbar Lodge. Paul and twenty-five or thirty of us were one night initiated and carried through the first three degrees of Masonry. The Negro Masons of that day in Jacksonville were a horny-handed set, recruited largely from the stevedores, hod carriers, lumber mill and brickyard hands, and the like. The initiation was rough, and lasted all night. One of our young friends was lame for a number of weeks on account of a fall to the floor while being tossed in a blanket.
Along This Way, by James Weldon Johnson. The Viking Press (New York, New York). 1933. Page 162.
During an era when Black men were systematically excluded from American society, membership in a Masonic lodge had important social and financial benefits.
The Masons were for many years the most prestigious of black lodges. The lodges were vital, along with the churches, in providing the respectability and wholesome association which the middle class hungered for; the insurance features were highly regarded by this economically marginal, security-conscious group. The good fellowship of the lodge hall and its calendar of inexpensive social events created a world of respectable recreation. Also, the quasi-religious rituals of the orders, the regalia and pomp of their ceremonies, and their humanistic cosmologies allowed for a feeling of dignity and spiritual unity which the objective circumstances of those struggling to stay one step ahead of poverty and degradation might rarely provide. The insurance program was the most compelling practical benefit of fraternal affiliation. All major orders provided money for funerals and regular, systematized relief for widows and orphans.
Black Ohio and the Color Line 1860 - 1915, by David A. Gerber. University of Illinois Press (Urbana, Illinois). 1976. Pages 158 - 163.