Black Heritage Trail Travel Guide

Massachusetts was the first state to declare slavery illegal, in 1783 - partly as a result of black participation in the Revolutionary War - and a large community of free blacks and escaped slaves swiftly grew in the North End and on Beacon Hill. Ironically, very few blacks now live on Beacon Hill, but the Black Heritage Trail through the area celebrates important sites in local black history (the various visitor centers provide maps).

Pick up the Trail either at 46 Joy St, where the Abiel Smith School contains a Museum of Afro-American History (summer daily 10am-4pm, rest of year Mon-Sat 10am-4pm; free), illustrating the national civil rights campaign as well as local history, or at the African Meeting House at 8 Smith Court (off Joy St), for displays and talks from well-informed rangers. Built in 1806 as the first African-American church in the United States, this became known as "Black Faneuil Hall" during the abolitionist campaign; Frederick Douglass issued his call here for all blacks to take up arms in the Civil War. Among those who responded were the volunteers of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment , commemorated by a monument at the edge of Boston Common, opposite the State House, which depicts their farewell march down Beacon Street. Robert Lowell won a Pulitzer Prize for his poem, For the Union Dead, about this monument, and the regiment's tragic end at Fort Wagner was depicted in the movie Glory. The Trail then winds around Beacon Hill, passing schools, other institutions, and residences ranging from the small, cream clapboard houses of Smith Court to the imposing Lewis and Harriet Hayden House at 66 Phillips St, once a stop on the famous "Underground Railroad," sheltering runaway slaves from pursuing bounty-hunters.