Viewing page 352 of 380

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[boxed]]
AMBASSADOR HOTEL
Los Angeles, Cal.
Oct. 7-8-9, 1978
Prince Hall Affiliation of Southern Jurisdiction
[[/boxed]]

[[image]]
John Gideon Lewis, Jr.

Sovereign Grand Commander of the United Supreme Council, A.A.S.R. of Freemasonry, Prince Hall Affiliation of the Southern Jurisdiction

John G. Lewis was elected to succeed his brother, Scott, as Grand Master of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Louisiana in 1941, and has been re-elected to that position without opposition each year since; during that time its membership has grown from 750 to nearly 12,000 and it has contributed more than $2,000,000 to a variety of charitable causes, many of them in aid of underprivileged black youth. It is also the second largest contributor to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which it has strongly supported for a quarter of a century.

Born in 1903 in Natchitoches, Louisiana, Mr. Lewis received his bachelor's degree in political science from Fisk University in Nashville in 1923, and had been accepted for graduate study toward a master's degree in business administration at New York university when the health of his parents forced him to return home. 

There, while engaged in the business of farming, he assisted his father and, later, his brother in their leadership of the Prince Hall Lodge. In 1937, he began devoting his full attention to Masonic affairs; he became manager of the Lodge's publishing firm and, subsequently, editor of the fraternal journal The Plumb Line, as well as a frequent contributor to similar publications. He was elected Lieutenant Grand Commander of the United Supreme Council, A.A.S.R. of Freemasonry, Prince Hall Affiliation of the Southern Jurisdiction, and was elevated to Sovereign Grand Commander in 1961.

Mr. Lewis is a life member of the NAACP and a former member of its National Board; a trustee of the National Urban League; a director of the Prince Hall Youth Fund of Louisiana, a church in Baton Rouge and a hospital in New Orleans; and a member of the Executive Board of the Conference of Christians and Jews.

A life member of the Louisiana Educational Association, he has served as chairman of a citizens' committee to secure greater education opportunity for black children, and as director of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. 

His public affairs activities include service as a member of the Bi-racial Committee to Implement the Public Accommodations Act, which desegregated his state's public facilities; the Bi-racial State Commission on Human Relations and Responsibilities, and the Bi-racial Community Relations Committee of Baton Rouge. He is also past chairman of the Board of Trustees of the State Industrial School for Negro Youth, served on the Governor's Committee appointed to study the state's penal system, and was vice chairman of the State's Law Enforcement Assistance Authority.

He has received numerous honors and awards from the Republic of Liberia, the States of Louisiana and Arkansas and the City of Baton Rouge, the NAACP, the Urban League, the American Legion, the March of Dimes, and many leading fraternal organizations and societies, including the Ancient Egyptian Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine of North and South America, of which he is Past Imperial Potentate.

358