News

Advancing the Masonic Dialogue

On April 9 the National Heritage Museum will host its first biannual symposium, “New Perspectives on American Freemasonry and Fraternalism.”

The symposium will discuss the latest insights into past and present American fraternal groups.

Brother Adam Kendall is one of seven international scholars invited to present. His presentation explores conflicts and interactions between the second Ku Klux Klan and California lodges in the 1920s.

Kendall is collections manager at the Henry W. Coil Library & Museum of Freemasonry in San Francisco. His research, which began several years ago, draws from rare primary correspondence and documents unearthed from the Grand Lodge of California archives and special collections.

Kendall originally presented his paper, “Klad in White Hoods and Aprons: American Fraternal Identities, Freemasonry and the Ku Klux Klan in California,” during the 2009 International Conference on the History of Freemasonry in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The National Heritage Museum, located in Lexington, Mass., houses the largest American Masonic and fraternal collection in the United States and strives to promote research on American fraternalism.