Word: granded
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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With the Gang. Masonry is an exclusively male reservation* and one of unassailable respectability. ("You can get off any time you like for a lodge meeting.") Its grand titles satisfy a yearning for rank and prestige. "I am among other things," said a degree-draped Elgin, Ill. photographer, "a Noble of the Shrine, a member of the Council of Royal and Select Masters of the York Rite, a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, a Knight of the East and West, a Knight of the Brazen Serpent and a Knight of the Sword. Sometimes when I go home late...
...what overall purpose does Masonry exist? In the high words of Roscoe Pound, onetime dean of the Harvard Law School and ex-Deputy Grand Master of the Massachusetts Masonic Grand Lodge, its end is "to preserve, to develop and transmit to posterity the civilization we have inherited . . . Wherever in the world there is a lodge of Masons, there should be a focus of civilization, a center of the idea of universality, radiating reason...
...formal international organization. Grand lodges, with regional jurisdiction over "constituent" lodges, are laws unto themselves. In the U.S. the regions are the 48 states and the District of Columbia. But Masonry is a theoretical world brotherhood open to any "good" man, Protestant, Jew, Catholic, Mohammedan, Taoist, Buddhist...
...theory has the same obvious chink as the theory of democracy. With very rare exceptions, Negroes are kept out. There are, however, some 800,000 Negroes practicing the rites, the vast majority of them in what are known as Prince Hall Grand Lodges. At least two Negro lodges, one in New Jersey, and one in Massachusetts, can lay claim to the legitimacy of their charters; the others, white Masons insist, are "clandestine" lodges, neither bona fide nor legitimate...
...brother who wants to devote the time and effort to it can continue his education through various higher grades. He can go through the Scottish Rite, (Northern or Southern Jurisdiction, depending on the location of his lodge) and up through the degrees. He will be dubbed along the way Grand Master Architect, Prince of the Tabernacle, Grand Inspector Inquisitor Commander, etc. At the 32nd degree he is a Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret:** Or he can work up through the York Rite with fewer degrees but just as much prestige, to the top grade of Knight Templar...