This book project, “Black Boston and the Making of African-American Freemasonry: Leadership, Religion, and Fraternalism in Early America,” examines the social, political, and religious contexts that shaped and were shaped by the first two generations of African-American Freemasons in Boston, Massachusetts. This investigation addresses an interpretive problem intrinsic to understanding both early Black Freemasonry and the transition of African-Americans from slavery to emancipation in the northern states during and just after the American Revolutionary Era. Did Black Freemasons successfully demand freedom and independence, or did they adopt a naïve political and cultural strategy of respectability and assimilation? This project reconciles and moves beyond this analytical impasse by showing how organized Black abolitionism coalesced earlier than previous studies have shown, and that it framed and mirrored four major historical contexts: the politics of northern emancipation, the rise of free Black leadership, the spread of African-American Christianity, and an emergent tradition of public Black writers. Examining early Black Freemasonry speaks to scholars in African-American history, Africana Religious Studies and Early American History. It explores the significance of events like the American Revolution; it brings new evidence and insight to the intersection of mobility, religion, class, politics, and gender within Black politics; and it provides new analysis of Black abolition from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. The understudied history of early Black Freemasonry brings to light a vital component of understanding how Black people shaped democracy and made America. These early Black leaders were unequivocal influencers for social justice, and their story must be told.