Topic: African Americans
Black West Enders, other Black Americans
Domingo Williams was an attendant and caterer who lived with his family in an apartment in the African Meeting House from 1819 to 1830. A 2005 archaeological dig behind the African Meeting House, in conjunction with mentions of Williams in local and national newspapers, help to illuminate Williams’ prosperous catering career, his activist involvement in Boston’s Black community, and his time living in one of the city’s most important Black social-religious centers.
Established in 1840, Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church was located on the North Slope of Beacon Hill (in the historic West End) until its move to Roxbury in 1906. In the 1850s and ‘60s, the Church defiantly mobilized in response to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Under the leadership of Leonard Grimes, the congregation raised funds to aid freedom seekers and became known as the “Fugitive Slave Church.” This active political, cultural, and religious meeting place had many prominent members and visitors from the Black abolitionist community, including Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Lewis and Harriet Hayden, Shadrach Minkins, Anthony Burns, Thomas Sims, Christiana Carteaux and Edward Mitchell Bannister, and Peter Randolph.
Boston’s rapid development in the seventeenth century would not have been possible without the labor of enslaved Africans, which allowed the construction of an integrated political economy linked primarily to markets of the West Indies. Boston served as a center of the slave trade and port of entry for enslaved Africans. By the early 1700s, the New England Colonies were deeply involved in an economic alliance with the sugar-producing West Indies, driven by the abduction and enslavement of Africans and the trade of raw materials, molasses, and rum.
The Leverett Street Jail in Boston’s West End held several freedom seekers whose cases tested the U.S.’s Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, including the cases of Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates (1836), and George Latimer (1842).
Robert Morris (1823-1882) was a prominent civil rights leader in Boston and the United States’ second African American lawyer. He built a successful career as a lawyer handling civil, criminal, and civil rights cases, while putting his life and livelihood on the line for causes he believed in: abolition, the protection of freedom seekers, the desegregation of schools, the integration of militias, equal rights for women, and fair representation for immigrants.
Charles Sumner (1811-1874) was a lawyer and United States Senator who was a vocal abolitionist and civil rights advocate. He was born and lived most of his life on the North Slope of Beacon Hill, where he had close connections with the Black and abolitionist community.
Entrepreneur Christiana Carteaux Bannister and artist Edward Mitchell Bannister married in Boston’s West End in 1857. Throughout the 1850s and 1860s, they were active in Boston’s abolitionist and artistic communities. During these years and beyond, their symbiotic financial and creative partnership helped to bolster both of their careers and their community connections.
The African Meeting House, believed to be the oldest standing Black church in America, was incorporated in 1805 and built in 1806. The building, now restored to its 1855 appearance, stands as a testament to the dedication and perseverance of the Black community on the north slope of Beacon Hill (which was at the time part of the West End). The African Baptist Church purchased the land for, fundraised for, and constructed the Meeting House in less than two years. Through this, they created a vital space for the Black community’s religious, political, and social gatherings.
