 The Order claimed that the ritual did not specify the use of a sword on the part of an officiating officer, and that the individual should be held accountable for the accident.The case went up to the Texas Supreme Court, which found in favor of the plaintiff and ordered the Order to pay him the $12,000 awarded by a lower court.After years of decline, membership surged after 1938, when Perry M. Smith, the Chief Grand Mentor, persuaded the Mississippi Jurisdiction of the order to build a hospital in the all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi.