In early March 1775, an Irish soldier initiated a dozen or more black Bostonian men into a lodge of Freemasons, making them probably the first people of African descent formally admitted into Freemasonry in the Atlantic world. Prince Hall, a freedman, would emerge as the leader of this group as they worked together to establish a tradition of African American Freemasonry that has persisted ever since a tradition that still carries his name.

All Men Free and Brethren is the first in-depth historical consideration of Prince Hall freemasonry from the Revolutionary era to the...