Walking the Black Heritage Trail in Boston, Beacon Hill

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Another day in Boston. This time I walked the Black Heritage Trail. After that I walked along the Charles river to the Prudential center where I did a little tour in the stores before getting my roommate from the airport.

The Black Heritage Trail

The free black community in Boston was concerned with finding decent housing, establishing independent supportive institutions, educating their children, and ending slavery in the rest of the nation. Between 1800 and 1900, most of the African Americans who lived in Boston lived in the West End, between Pinckney and Cambridge streets, and between Joy and Charles streets, a neighborhood now called the North Slope of Beacon Hill. Many of these homes are now part of the Black Heritage Trail.

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Photos

54th Regiment Memorial, Nov17 2010 (1)
Responding to pressure from black and white abolitionists, President Lincoln admitted black soldiers in to the Union forces in 1863. The 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry was the first black regiment to be recruited in the North.

George Middleton House, Nov17 2010 (1)
Built in 1787, this is the oldest extant home built by African Americans on Beacon Hill. Its original owners were George Middleton (1751-1815), a liveryman and Revolutionary War veteran, and Louis Glapion, a French hairdresser. Both were members of the African Lodge of Masons founded by black educator Prince Hall.

Phillips School, Nov17 2010
This architecture is typical of 19th-century Boston schoolhouses. Erected in 1824, this school was open only to white children until 1855. Black children in the neighboorhood attended school on the first floor of the African Meeting House or, after 1834, the Abiel Smith School. When segregated schools were abolished by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1855, the Phillips School became the first integrated school in Boston.

Charles Street Meeting House, Nov17 2010
This meeting house was built in 1807 by the white Third Baptist Church of Boston.

Lewis and Harriet Hayden House, Nov17 2010
Lewis Hayden was born a slave in Lexington, Ky. After escaping via the Underground Railroad, he and his wife Harriet settled in Boston, where he became a leader in the abolition movement. The Hayden house was a stop on the Boston's Underground Railroad and the Haydens fed, clothed, and sheltered two-thirds of the fugitive slaves passing through the city.