RIRoosevelt42
Contents
ROOSEVELT LODGE #42
Location: X
Chartered By: X
Dispensation Date: date
Charter Date: date
Current Status: status
NOTES
Meeting date: First Tuesday
PAST MASTERS
REFERENCES IN GRAND LODGE PROCEEDINGS
ANNIVERSARIES
VISITS BY GRAND MASTER
BY-LAW CHANGES
HISTORY
Roosevelt Lodge No.42, F. & A. M. now of Centerdale, on October 27, 1924, celebrated the second anniversary of its constitution. Three years before, the institution of this Rhode Island Masonic Lodge was looked upon with the same misgivings as an idealistic experiment. Today Rhode Island Freemasonry accords to Roosevelt Lodge a place of high standing in the jurisdiction, and those of us who have an intimate part in its formation and accomplishment sincerely enjoy the opportunity now afforded to tell the story of this unique organization to the Freemasons of America.
To understand the story of Roosevelt Lodge, one must know something of Providence, its cosmopolitan population, its civic and religious traditions, and its Masonic activities. In an Atlantic seaport city, the second largest in New England, and a great industrial center, we would expect to find a cosmopolitan population. Here the Italian group is unusually large and takes an active and constructive part in local and state affairs. The Scandinavian Peninsula has furnished another large group of citizens, while Armenians, Syrians, and other nationalities are numerously represented.
If one had been privileged in 1921 to examine the membership rolls of some lodges in this Jurisdiction, he probably would not have found an Italian name nor more than four or five names from other non-English speaking European countries. Men of the Jewish faith were restricted to a single lodge. In this, we were probably not unlike most of the other conservative jurisdictions; we proclaimed the splendor and glory of the brotherhood of man, with the mental reservation that ours must be a brotherhood of the men of English-speaking countries. You may attribute it to New England conservatism, or you may call it by its true name, intolerance, but whatever its cause, the conditions did not appeal to the organizers of Roosevelt Lodge as being just or fair. It wasn’t a Square Deal!
In 1920 a Grand Lodge Committee met several local masons of Italian origin, members of Lodges in other jurisdictions, for the purpose of considering the possibility of instituting a Lodge to which men of their nationality might apply with a fair prospect of success. The committee, realizing that good men of Italian descent were being denied admission to the lodges, recommended that the Grand lodge look favorably upon the project. But no one took the initiative and a year passed.
In the following June the persistence of these Italians was rewarded and a meeting was called for the 10th day of June, 1921. This marks the real beginning of Roosevelt Lodge. Of the sixteen Masons who met together that evening, ten were past maters of Rhode Island Lodges, men who had received the highest honor in the gift of their respective lodges. It is also a fact worthy of note that many of these distinguished brethren were descendants of the earliest Rhode Island and New England settlers.
Four of the sixteen who met on that historic evening were men of Italian origin, and it was their hope and expectation that an Italian-American lodge might result. But those who were responsible for the meeting had a vision of real brotherhood of an organization that would make no distinctions of race or creed, and they told these Italian brethren that there was, in their opinion, no place for separatism in American Freemasonry, that in Rhode Island a Masonic Lodge must be all-American. It is entirely to the credit of these Italian brethren that they appreciated, applauded, and accepted this viewpoint.
