Crossing Gender and Colour Lines in American Fraternalism
A Study on Joseph W. Kinsley (1843–1905)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.34717Keywords:
Fraternalism, women, African Americans, desegregationAbstract
At first sight, Joseph W. Kinsley could be considered as one of those uncountable ‘grandees’ of American fraternalism whose lives have all fallen into a justified oblivion. Closer scrutiny however reveals a career within different fraternal societies that went far beyond the habitual accumulation of titles and responsibilities in the mainstream orders. Kinsley endeavoured experiments with new types of fraternities wherein the normal exclusion of women and African Americans was to be transcended, first in a frontier town in Montana, later in the federal capital. If all of these orders eventually failed, their short-lived histories nevertheless shed light on those men and women, black and white, who tried to make use of the specific context of the American west to break with segregation and gender exclusiveness. They brought this new formula to other parts of the country. Whatever the limitations of his projects and of the views that he held on race and gender, Kinsley does appear as one of the lonely pioneers who tried to break with deep-rooted fraternal orthodoxies regarding these same categories.
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Bourdieu, P. ‘L’illusion biographique’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, 62–63 (1986): 69–72. https://doi.org/10.3406/arss.1986.2317
Browning, J.B. ‘The Beginnings of Insurance Enterprise among Negroes’, Journal of Negro History 22.4 (1937): 417–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/2714236
Buhle, M.J. Women and American Socialism, 1870–1920. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983.
Castañeda, A. ‘Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: the Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History’, Pacific Historical Review 61.4 (1992): 501–33. https://doi.org/10.2307/3641046
Croteau, J. ‘Prince Hall: Masonry and the Man’, The Northern Light (February 2011), 12–13.
de Graaf, L.B. ‘Race, Sex, and Region: Black Women in the American West, 1850–1920’, Pacific Historical Review 49.2 (1980): 285–313. https://doi.org/10.2307/3638903
De Swarte, Gifford C. ‘Home Protection: The WCTU’s Conversion to Woman Suffrage’, in Gender, Ideology and Action: Historical Perspectives on Women’s Public Lives, ed. Janet Sharistanian. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986, 95–120.
De Swarte, Gifford C. & Slagell, A.R. eds. Let Something Good Be Said. Speeches and Writings of Frances E. Willard. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Epstein, B. The Politics of Domesticity. Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1986.
Gambone, J.G. ‘The Forgotten Feminist of Kansas 1. The Papers of Clarina I.H. Nichols, 1854–1885’, The Kansas Historical Quarterly 39 (Spring 1973): 12–57.
Gannon, B.A. The Won Cause: Black and White Comradeship in the Grand Army of the Republic. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807877708_gannon
Hackett, D.G. That Religion in Which All Men Agree: Freemasonry in American Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1525/california/9780520281677.001.0001
Higham, J. ‘The American Party, 1886–1891’, Pacific Historical Review (February 1950), 37–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/3635098
Hinks, P.P., & Kantrowitz S., eds. All Men Free and Brethren. Essays on the History of African American Freemasonry. Ithaca, NY & London: Cornell University Press, 2013.
History of the Order Eastern Star in California. San Francisco, CA: Grand Chapter, 1929.
Jacob, M.D. ‘Getting Out of a Rut: Decolonizing Western Women’s History’, Pacific Historical Review 79.4 (2010): 585–604. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2010.79.4.585
Kantrowitz, S. ‘‘’Intended for the Better Government of Man”: The Political History of African American Freemasonry in the Era of Emancipation’, Journal of American History 96.4 (2010): 1001–26. https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/96.4.1001
Kaufman, J. For the Common Good? American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Lang, W.L. ‘The Nearly Forgotten Blacks on Last Chance Gulch, 1900–1912’, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 70.2 (1979): 50–57.
Levine, H.G. ‘Temperance and Women in 19th-Century United States’, Alcohol and Drug Problems in Women, ed. Oriana J. Kalant. New York: Plenum Press, 1980,25–67. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-7737-9_2
Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines in the Civil War. Compiled by the Adjutant General. Norwood: Norwood Press, 1931.
McPherson, J.M. The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP. Princeton, NJ: University Press, 1975.
Meier A., Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1988.
Mihelich D.N. ‘A Socioeconomic Portrait of Prince Hall Masonry in Nebraska’, Great Plains Quarterly, 1 (1997): 35–47.
Miller, J. An Illustrated History of the State of Montana (Chicago, IL: Lewis Publishing Company, 1894).
Mills, Q.T. Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
Myers, R.C. ‘Montana’s Negro Newspapers, 1894–1911’, Montana Journalism Review (1973), 17–22.
Petrik, P. No Step Backward. Women and Family on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, Helena, Montana, 1865–1900. Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1987.
Pflugrad-Jackisch, A. Brothers of a Vow. Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia. Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
Porset, C., & Révauger, C., eds. Le Monde maçonnique des Lumières (Europe-Amériques & Colonies). Paris: Champion, 2013.
Révauger, C. Noirs et francs-maçons. Comment la ségrégation raciale s’est installée chez les frères américains. Paris: Dervy, 2014.
Skocpol, T., Liazos A., & Ganz M. What a Mighty Power We Can Be: African-American Fraternal Groups and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
Slifko, J. ‘An Historical Geography of Louis Goaziou and the Early Years of L’Ordre Maçonnique Mixte et International “Le Droit Humain”, American Federation of Human Rights: the Significance of the Industrial Monongahela Valley of Western Pennsylvania’, Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 4.1–2 (2013): 88–109.
Smith, S.M. ‘The Photographer’s Touch. J.P. Ball’, Pictures and Progress. Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity, eds. Maurice O. Wallace and Shawn M. Smith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012, 321–28.
Smith, W.E. Charles Dickens’ First American Editions. A Bibliography (Calabasas, CA: David Brass Rare Books, 2012).
Stevens, A. The Cyclopaedia of Fraternities. New York: Paterson, 1899.
Taylor jr., Q. ‘The Emergence of Black Communities in the Pacific Northwest: 1865–1910’, Journal of Negro History, 64.4 (1979): 342–54. https://doi.org/10.2307/2716942
––In Search of the Racial Frontier. African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990. New York & London: Norton & Co., 1999.
Willis, D. ed. J. P. Ball. Daguerrean and Studio Photographer. New York & London: Garland, 1993.
Wilson, K.P. Campfires of Freedom. The Camp Life of Black Soldiers during the Civil War. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2002.
Woodson, C.G. ‘Insurance Business Among Negroes’, Journal of Negro History 14.2 (1929): 202–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/2714068
Published
2017-09-28
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Tyssens, J. (2017). Crossing Gender and Colour Lines in American Fraternalism: A Study on Joseph W. Kinsley (1843–1905). Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism, 6(1), 94-130. https://doi.org/10.1558/jrff.34717
