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A Noble Fight examines the metaphors and meanings behind the African American appropriation of the culture, ritual, and institution of freemasonry in navigating the contested terrain of American democracy. Combining cultural and political theory with extensive archival research--including the discovery of a rare collection of nineteenth-century records of an African American Freemason Lodge--Corey D. B. Walker provides an innovative perspective on American politics and society during the long transition from slavery to freedom.

With great care and detail, Walker argues that African American freemasonry provides a critical theoretical lens for understanding the distinctive ways African Americans have constructed a radically democratic political imaginary through racial solidarity and political nationalism, forcing us to reconsider much more circumspectly the complex relationship between voluntary associations and democratic politics.

Mapping the discursive logics of the language of freemasonry as a metaphoric rendering of American democracy, this study interrogates the concrete forms of an associational culture, revealing how paradoxical aspects of freemasonry such as secrecy and public association inform the production of particular ideas and expressions of democracy in America.

Originally published in 1924 and long out of print, this book tells the story of the Mosaic Templars of America (MTA), a famous Black fraternal organization that was founded by John E. Bush and Chester W. Keatts (both former slaves) in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the late-nineteenth century. The organization originally provided illness, death, and burial insurance during an era of segregation when few basic services were available to Black people, and grew to include an insurance company, a building and loan association, a publishing company, a business college, a nursing school, and a hospital.

By 1905 it had a number of lodges across the state of Arkansas with thousands of members. In 1913 a handsome new headquarters building opened and Booker T. Washington delivered the dedication speech. In the 1920s they claimed chapters in twenty-six states and six foreign countries, making it one of the largest Black organizations in the world. 

However, in the 1930s the MTA began to feel the effects of the Great Depression and eventually ceased operations except for a single chapter in Barbados. Tragically, the original Little Rock headquarters building burned down in 2005.

This replica edition of History of the Mosaic Templars of America, with a new introduction by John William Graves, was published to coincide with the grand opening in 2008 of a completely rebuilt structure that houses the new Mosaic Templars Cultural Center.