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The test, stated without varnish: the orders banked for this town — Masons, Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows, Elks-class bodies in the county, the Grand Army post — were, in the era of the 1907 census, white men's orders in practice, and the parallel Black orders that exclusion made necessary either seated in Walkerton or they did not.no parallel order: no Prince Hall lodge, no Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, no Black fraternal body of any name, at any ruling date, on Walkerton or ring ground. The town's own paper record reached carries the same silence. The test result prints plainly: in Walkerton, the fraternal color line was not a door with a parallel door beside it; it was a wall with nothing on the other side, in a town whose Black population across the census record was counted in single and double digits — nine Black residents in 2010, twenty in 2020, in the banked population record — too few, across the whole fraternal era, to seat a parallel lodge of their own.
The county's parallel orders stand at the boundary, and they are South Bend's: the I.B.P.O.E. of W., Lodge No. 298, at 1001 West Western Avenue, South Bend — the Black Elks, the order founded because the white Elks' national rule long limited membership to white citizens (the restriction stood until 1973) — listed active in the order's own directory record; and the Prince Hall Masons, whose Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Indiana was established on 16 September 1856 and won mutual recognition from the Grand Lodge of Indiana in May 1998, with a subordinate lodge line at 1519 Linden Avenue, South Bend (St. Peters Lodge No. 31, in the register-mirror record). Exclusion is documented here, not euphemized: for the whole of the lodge era, a Black man of Walkerton who wanted a lodge had to leave town to find one that would have him, and the town's record shows none seated closer than the county seat.
lodge directory (Lodge No. 298, 1001 W. Western Ave, South Bend); Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Indiana, grand-lodge history (established 16 September 1856; mutual recognition, May 1998); register-mirror line, St. Peters Lodge No. 31, 1519 Linden Ave, South Bend.