Boston African American National Historic Site, in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, preserves a large number of structures related to the history of Boston’s free African American community of the 1800’s. Visitors to the site can walk the 1.6-mile (2.6-kilometer) Black Heritage Trail, which links these structures.
The site includes the African Meeting House, the oldest existing church building for African Americans in the United States. The meeting house was built in 1805 and 1806, almost entirely with black labor, to house the First African Baptist Church. The church served as a location for celebrations and for political and antislavery meetings, as well as for religious activities. In 1832, the abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society, one of the first groups to call for an end to slavery, at the meeting house. Before 1855, the church also housed a school for black children. In the late 1800’s, a Jewish congregation bought the building, which served as a synagogue until 1972. In that year, the Museum of Afro American History purchased the structure, which has been restored to its 1850’s appearance.
Another stop on the Black Heritage Trail is the Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Memorial, which commemorates the first black regiment recruited in the North during the American Civil War (1861-1865). The American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens created the memorial’s bronze sculpture. Shaw, a young white Bostonian, led the regiment. Shaw and many of his soldiers died in an 1863 attack on Fort Wagner, in South Carolina. The regiment included William Carney, the first black man to receive the Medal of Honor.
The site also includes the Phillips School, one of Boston’s first public schools to become integrated; and the Abiel Smith School, the country’s first publicly funded school for black children. The Charles Street Meeting House, another structure on the site, accommodated the African Methodist Episcopal Church from 1876 to 1939.
Visitors also can view the exteriors of former residences of notable African Americans. For example, the Lewis and Harriet Hayden House was once a station on the underground railroad, an informal system of escape routes and housing for runaway slaves. The George Middleton House is the oldest existing home built and owned by African Americans on Beacon Hill.
Congress authorized the establishment of the Boston African American National Historic Site in 1980. Only the African Meeting House and the restored Abiel Smith School are open to the public. The historic residences are private homes and therefore closed to visitors. The National Park Service and the Museum of Afro American History operate and maintain the site.
