Black Heritage Trail

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The Black Heritage Trail is a path in Boston, Massachusetts, winding through the Beacon Hill neighborhood and sites important in American black history.

In 1783, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to declare slavery illegal — mostly out of gratitude for black participation in the Revolutionary War. Subsequently, a sizable community of free blacks and escaped slaves developed in Boston, on the north face of Beacon Hill, and in the North End. Boston was long considered a desirable destination for southern black slaves escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad.

[edit] Sites Along the Trail

The Black Heritage Trail links over 15 pre-Civil War structures and historic sites, including the African Meeting House.

The trail begins at the Abiel Smith School, 46 Joy Street, which houses the Museum of African American History. There interactive exhibits tell the story of the American civil rights movement, and Boston's black history. Next, at the renowned African Meeting House, 8 Smith Court, there are displays and speeches from well-informed orators. Built in 1806, the African Meeting House was the first African American church in the United States; it became known as the Black Faneuil Hall during the abolitionist movement. Here Frederick Douglass gave many speeches, including his impassioned call for blacks to take up arms against the South in the American Civil War. Among those who responded were the volunteers of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment; their contributions are commemorated by an impressive monument, depicting their farewell march down Beacon Street, at the edge of Boston Common, across Beacon Street from the Massachusetts State House. (Robert Lowell won a Pulitzer Prize for his poem, For the Union Dead, about this monument. The regiment's tragic end at Fort Wagner is the subject of the film Glory.) The Black Heritage Trail then winds around Beacon Hill, passing significant schools, institutions, and houses, ranging from the small, cream clapboard residences of Smith Court to the imposing Lewis and Harriet Hayden House, 66 Phillips St, which was a famed stop on the Underground Railroad, sheltering many runaway slaves from bounty-hunters.

This trail links the sites that comprise Boston African American National Historic Site.

Although some black Bostonians lived in the North End and in the West End north of Cambridge Street, more than half the city’s 2,000 blacks lived on Beacon Hill just below the residence of wealthy whites. The historic buildings along today’s Black Heritage Trail were the homes, business, schools, and churches of a black community that organized, for the nation’s earliest years, to sustain those who faced discrimination and slavery. The Black Heritage Trail contains: