In 1999, I was contacted by a friend in the real estate business who wanted help to clear out a house so that it could be sold after its elderly owner had died. When I arrived at 2642–67th Ave in Oakland, there was a dumpster in the driveway, ready to be filled. It was a small house in a residential neighborhood. Going inside, it was filled with debris & boxes & papers. The children of the deceased had already been thru the house & taken all the valuables; the washer, dryer, fridge, tableware & most of the furniture.
I began the cleanup process by opening some of the boxes, which mostly contained old papers & records. Opening one box, I discovered a Masonic apron.
Looking further, I began to uncover family photos & letters. There were hundreds of photos, 17 boxes of slides & 22 reels of 8-mm home movies. In one tiny box that was evidently overlooked by the kids, I found a man’s gold wedding band.
In another I found a lock of hair. I thought; This is an entire family history & it’s about to go into the trash. I filled half a dozen banker boxes with this material & took it home. The rest went into the dumpster.
It was 15 years later that I pulled those boxes from storage & I begin a process of sorting & researching. Here is the story of Albert H DuBois, a 33rd degree Mason & his wife, Roma.
Albert H Dubois was born on August 25, 1919 in Macon Lake, Arkansas. His family, with roots in the slavery of the south, subsisted by working in the cotton fields. His mother, Bessie, was 15 years old when she had her first child by an unknown father.
Tracing family history, I discovered a complex mix of relationships as abandoned & orphaned children are passed off & raised by various families & relatives. In the 1930’s Albert Dubois moved to Fresno County, California to pick cotton & work as an itinerant field hand. On October 15, 1941, he married Roma Bell in Fresno, California. He was 22 years old & she was 19.
Roma was born in Morrison, Oklahoma just one year before the Tulsa Race Riot, which destroyed 35 city blocks & killed an estimated 300 black people.
In 1942, Albert joined the army & spent 3 years in Europe during the war. Stationed in Germany, he was in charge of a motor pool.
After being discharged from the Army, Albert & Roma moved to Oakland, where he began work at the shipyard repairing boilers. It was dirty, laborious work that involved mixing & applying asbestos plaster. In the mid-1950s, he joined a Masonic lodge.
In 1956, Albert & Roma attended the national Black Masonic Conference in Orlando, Florida. It was during that trip that they visited Silver Springs Park. I can imagine scenes from the TV show “Lovecraft County” as they drove thru the South.
In 1964, his step-brother Charles Goodman, who had been to prison twice, died when his clothes caught fire after he lit a wood stove with gasoline.
During the 1970s & ‘80s, Albert was very involved with the Masonic Lodge.
Over the years, he rose to the highest position within the Masonic Lodge.
On June 12, 1987, his 117-page deposition was taken as part of a group asbestos lawsuit against the owners of the shipyard.
Albert H Dubois died of cancer at the age of 71 on March 1st, 1991 without seeing any benefit from that lawsuit. Roma died 6 years later on August 20, 1999 at the age of 77. – It was a couple months later that I recovered the DuBois family history.
I still have all those papers, pictures & stuff.
In his honor, I am going to wear his Masonic fez at the Cacophony Society Cocktail Party at Burning Man 2025.