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Roxbury History

Phillis Wheatley

Prodigy, poet and slave, Phillis Wheatley's work was heralded in her own time and was met with renewed interest during the Abolitionist Era.

Etching of Phyllis Wheatley

David Walker

Orator, organizer, entrepreneur, unsung hero – early nineteenth-century Boston resident David Walker was a militant voice of the black freedom struggle.

Plaque commemorating David Walker

 

The First African Baptist Church (African Meeting House)

Built in 1806, the First African Baptist Church is the nation's oldest black church.  Beyond the spiritual, it was known as the "abolition church," and most of Boston's black activists congregated there at some point.

Photograph of The First African Baptist Church

 

Maria Stewart

Years before Frederick Douglass would urge self-reliance and self-sufficiency for African Americans, Maria Stewart was forced to fend for herself.  In retrospect and respect, this pioneer in women’s rights and anti-slavery efforts crossed the lines of social and political convention, expanding the boundaries and horizons for generations to come.

 

The Tremont Temple Baptist Church

Originally housing the Tremont Theatre, this imposing edifice on Tremont Street in the heart of downtown Boston, opened in 1827, becoming the home of grand opera in the Hub, and, in time, a symbol of integration.

Drawing of the interior of The Tremont Temple Baptist Church

 

 

William & Ellen Craft

For sheer ingenuity and artful deception, the story of antebellum runaways William and Ellen Craft has few equals. The Crafts were intent upon reaching the Promised Land of freedom while the strategies they employed became legendary.

Images of William & Ellen Craft

Charles Lenox Remond

During the thirty-four-year publishing history of William Lloyd Garrison’s weekly newspaper, The Liberator, a ringing motto adorned its masthead: “Our Country is the World – Our Countrymen All Mankind.” Throughout that era, a Salem barber, Charles Lenox Remond, not only exemplified Garrison’s commitment to universal human rights but “became one of the first paid, full-time antislavery speakers.” 

Etching of a slave in chains with the quotation "Am I not a man and a brother/"

William Cooper Nell

Activist, organizer, debater and playwright, William Cooper Nell was truly a renaissance man in Boston's Abolition Acre.

Image of William Cooper Nell

Lydia Maria Child

Relentlessly pursuing moral agitation rather than social conformity, Lydia Maria Child excelled in many arenas of public life, beyond the boundaries of social convention.

Photograph of Lydia Maria Child

Lewis & Harriet Hayden

Radical abolitionists, Lewis and Harriet Hayden were involved in the rescue of fugitive slave Shadrack Minkins, and regularly sheltered escaped slaves who hoped to hide from the slave catchers newly empowered by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.  

Image of Lewis Hayden

John Swett Rock

Rock’s visibility naturally lent itself to local esteem as a medical man, teacher, anti-slavery speaker and, eventually, a barrister. A professional, he served as a role model of racial uplift, black pride and self-advancement with a flair for self-actualization, temperance and entrepreneurial drive.

Image of John Swett Rock

William Wells Brown

Surviving a succession of menial occupations in and around St. Louis, Missouri – a tavernkeeper’s helper, steward on a Mississippi River steamboat, hotel servant, printer’s apprentice, a field hand, a house-servant, a part-time physician’s assistant, a carriage driver, a gang-boss for a slave trader whom he called a “soul-driver” – Brown transformed a litany of trials and despairs into literary art.

Image of William Wells Brown