At Acacia Club, a long history of community

PROVIDENCE — A smooth saxophone melody wafted over the low conversations and laughter of the patrons at the Acacia Club last Wednesday night, as jazz saxophonist Leland Baker played "Straight No Chaser," by Thelonious Monk.

People in the audience described the club as cozy, the music as soulful and the clientele as friendly, but the establishment — called “The Temple” by many in the community — is more than just a fun place for a night out.

The Acacia Club, which sits in the basement of the Prince Hall Grand Lodge Masonic Temple, an unassuming white building on Eddy Street in South Providence, provides a revenue stream for the Prince Hall Masons, one of the oldest black organizations in the country, and has been a haven in the Providence community for decades.

The weekly jazz nights offer just another incentive to bring people together.

“Jazz is a very creative music based on improvisation, but also it’s very soulful,” said Baker, who played last Wednesday with Joseph Godfrey on keys, Randy Cloutier on drums and Matthew Passeroni on bass. “It’s about the soul, it’s about community, it’s about trying to connect with everything and everybody.

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“Ultimately, for me, it’s freedom,” he said.

Providing an outlet for people to relax, enjoy music and come together is exactly what Prince Reid, Most Worshipful Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons of Rhode Island, hoped to achieve with the jazz nights, which began just over a year ago at the Acacia Club.

“It’s been like a family reunion every Wednesday night,” he said.

Prince Hall, a Barbados native who immigrated to Boston in the 1700s, established the Prince Hall Masons after he and a handful of other black men were denied admittance to the existing American Masonic organization. Hall petitioned the Grand Lodge of England, the oldest Masonic grand lodge in the world, to issue a charter for African Lodge No. 459, which was established in Boston in 1784 as the first lodge of African American Masons in North America. The lodge in Providence was formed more than 10 years later.

For Reid, who joined the Prince Hall Masons while serving as a captain in the Army, the organization represents brotherly love, (and sisterly love — the Order of the Eastern Star is the branch of the Masons open to women).

“No matter if you’re white, black, blue, green, if you’re a Mason and you see the emblem,” Reid said, referring to the square and compasses symbol that represents the Masons, “and somebody’s in distress, you stop and help them out.”

To this day, the organization serves the community by providing scholarships to youth, hosting cookouts for the neighborhood and throwing an annual Christmas party for kids, Reid said.

The Providence Branch of the NAACP, a national organization founded in 1909 to fight racial discrimination in the U.S., rents its office space on the property of the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge, said Jim Vincent, president of the NAACP Providence branch.

The Prince Hall Masons was truly the first institution, other than the black church, that organized on behalf of African Americans in the United States, Vincent said.

“They were here before the NAACP, before the Urban League,” he said. “The Prince Hall Masons have played an historic role in terms of black liberation.”

Providing a safe space for black people to gather, discuss the issues affecting their communities and mobilize for change has been essential throughout history, Vincent said. With the racism that persists today, it’s as important as ever to have these spaces, he said.

“The black community is not one that’s just going to sit and take it,” he said. “We are going to organize, we’re going to advocate, and we're going to motivate our community to fight things that are detrimental to our community. We need spaces, we need organization, we need structure to help do that.”

Born out of African-American musicians in the South in the 1900s, jazz has roots in ragtime and blues — genres that originated with slaves on Southern plantations.

“You had people here in this country who were second-class citizens, for the most part treated like it, so I think the music was one of the outlets,” Baker said. “For me, I think it’s about trying to connect almost in a spiritual sense, to kind of alleviate pain. To express your emotions freely, to speak freely without being persecuted because of the color of your skin or who you are.”

During a break in the music on Wednesday night, Jonathan Hurt, a Deputy Grand Master of the Prince Hall Masons of Rhode Island, said that with the jazz nights, he hopes to create a welcoming atmosphere for anyone who wants to come by.

“What we tried to do was instill something that is consistent,” he said. “A nice, warm environment where you can hear good music. We welcome everyone.”

Barbara Darlene Montague-Davis, 61, who lives down the street from the club, said she goes all the time.

“I love jazz,” she said. “I love hearing the instruments, the different instruments and how they manipulate them.”

For her, the club’s location in the basement of the old Masonic temple and the many people who pass through its doors — like Conway Toliver, a 94-year-old jazz singer, who stopped to chat on his way out — represent important links to the past.

“There’s so much history here,” she said.

These connections to black history and tradition are what make the Acacia Club, the Prince Hall Masons and jazz music such meaningful elements of the black community in Providence, Vincent said.

“Our contributions in terms of music to this country are noteworthy, are legendary,” he said. “The fact that we have a historic black organization like Prince Hall hosting jazz, it makes all the sense in the world.”

 — mlist@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @madeleine_list