NOTE: THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN UPDATED AND CORRECTED AT 4:40PM 5/30/2018, AND MORE INFORMATION WILL BE ADDED AS DETAILS ARE MADE AVAILABLE:





I was prematurely informed that mutual recognition in Florida was passed on Tuesday - that's not quite the case just yet.





The

voted Tuesday at their 189th Annual Communication to finalize the steps to mutually recognize as regular their Prince Hall counterparts – the

.,(established in 1870).





This comes nearly a decade after Florida's PHA grand lodge first reached out to their mainstream brethren by requesting recognition. The GL of Florida rejected those overtures in the past, and the PHA grand lodge dropped the subject

. However, private meetings and off the record conversations reactivated the process in the last few months.





Following backchannel discussions between the two jurisdictions, the MW Union Grand Lodge of Florida developed options concerning terms by which they could accept recognition from the Grand Lodge of Florida. For their own constitutional reasons, those proposals had to lay over for 90 days – that period has not run its course yet.





So, what the members of the GL of Florida voted in favor of Tuesday was to grant the incoming Grand Master, John Karroum, the final authority to accept or deny terms of recognition

after the MWUGLF undertakes their own voting.



