Topic: Abolition
Abolition, abolitionists, anti-slavery, The Liberator, the colonial movement
The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was the Union’s first free Black regiment of the Civil War. The Massachusetts Black regiments were all deeply linked to the West End, from which they were advocated for, recruited, and organized. The 54th is memorialized in a bas relief on Boston Common, and in the 1989 film “Glory”.
David Walker, an African-American abolitionist who lived on the north slope of Beacon Hill, published a prominent book of the anti-slavery movement after traveling to many parts of the United States.
Harriet Tubman, a self-emancipated slave, remains the most famous and successful Underground Railroad conductor in United States history. She played an important role in Boston as an emancipator and activist for African Americans and women.
One of the first American women of any race to give a public address in the nineteenth century, Stewart was one of Boston’s prominent Black abolitionists who lived on the north slope of Beacon Hill in the 1830s.
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and George Ruffin were eminent African-American residents of the West End in the late nineteenth-century. Josephine’s newspaper, The Woman’s Era, was published from her home and instrumental to the founding of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was its first vice president.
John S. Rock was an accomplished Black dentist, doctor, lawyer, and abolitionist lecturer who resided on the north slope of Beacon Hill shortly before and during the Civil War.
William Cooper Nell, the United States’ first Black historian, was an intellectual and abolitionist who became an integral part of The Liberator’s staff and advocate for Black rights. He was also the first Black person to serve in the federal civil service, and was deeply involved in desegregating Boston schools.
Col. George Middleton was an African American Revolutionary War soldier, a “Prince Hall Freemason,” and civil rights activist, who’s home is now part of the Black Heritage Trail. He was born in 1735 and died in 1815.
