own initiation into the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Eugene V. Debs recalled the evening as a watershed in his life: A new purpose entered my life, a fresh force impelled me as I repeated the obligation to serve the 'brotherhood,' and I left that meeting with a totally different and far loftier ambition than I had ever known before. Formulaic rituals and organizational secrecy also helped to insure that lodge meetings were orderly, intimate and confidential and contributed to group cohesion among B of LF members. The value of the B of LF's mission was emphasized, allowing serious-minded members a sense of personal fulfillment through participation in an important collective entity. Membership exclusion The benefits of membership in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen were not universally available as the organization was based on the systematic exclusion of African American men and of women of all races. The organization's constitution in 1888 specified that membership requirements included that a candidate be a man "white born, of good moral character, sober and industrious, sound of body and limb". Additional de facto membership discrimination was practiced against recent unskilled immigrants from Europe, who were similarly held to be unsuitable for membership. The white-only rule came up for debate in 1896-97, when the B of LF explored membership in the American Federation of Labor, only to learn that the AF of L would require the removal of the offending clause from the group's constitution. Rank and file membership erupted in protest over the change, flooding the organization with letters of protest, with members of lodges in the Southern United States most vociferous in their opposition. The racial exclusion was ruled unconstitutional in 1944 by the Supreme Court decision Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. The B of LF and other similar railroad brother hoods were, in short, based as much upon a process of exclusion as they were upon unification, as historian Mary Ann Clawson has noted in a 1989 book. Leading officials The pioneer head of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen during the decade of the 1870s was Frank W. Arnold (1851–1917). Arnold would be succeeded as Grand Master of the B of LF in 1885 by a man who would remain the iconic chief of the brotherhood for the rest of the 19th century, Frank P. Sargent. The New England-born Sargent remained the head official of the B of LF