Black Heritage Trail - Sites Along The Trail

Sites Along The Trail

The Black Heritage Trail links more than 15 pre-Civil War structures and historic sites, including the African Meeting House.

The trail begins at the Abiel Smith School, 46 Joy Street, which houses the Museum of African American History. There interactive exhibits tell the story of the American Civil Rights Movement, and Boston's black history. Next, at the renowned African Meeting House, 8 Smith Court, there are displays and speeches from well-informed orators. Built in 1806, the meeting house was the first African-American church in the United States; it became known as the Black Faneuil Hall during the abolitionist movement. Here Frederick Douglass gave many speeches, including his impassioned call for blacks to take up arms against the South in the American Civil War.

Among those who responded were the volunteers of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment. Their contributions were commemorated by an impressive monument, depicting their farewell march down Beacon Street, at the edge of Boston Common, across Beacon Street from the Massachusetts State House. Robert Lowell won a Pulitzer Prize for his poem "For the Union Dead" about this monument and soldiers. The regiment's tragic end at Fort Wagner was the subject of the film Glory.

The Black Heritage Trail then winds around Beacon Hill. It passes significant schools, institutions, and houses, ranging from the small, cream clapboard residences of Smith Court to the imposing Lewis and Harriet Hayden House, 66 Phillips St. The Hayden House was a famed stop on the Underground Railroad and sheltered many runaway slaves from bounty hunters.

This trail links the sites that comprise Boston African American National Historic Site.

Although some black Bostonians lived in the North End and in the West End north of Cambridge Street, more than half the city’s 2,000 blacks lived on Beacon Hill just below the residences of wealthy whites. The historic buildings along today’s Black Heritage Trail were the homes, business, schools, and churches of a black community that organized from the nation’s earliest years to sustain those who faced discrimination and slavery.

The Black Heritage Trail includes

• 54th Regiment Memorial
• African Meeting House
• Abiel Smith School
• Charles Street Meeting House
• John Coburn House
• Lewis and Harriet Hayden House
• George Middleton House
• Phillips School
• Smith Court Residences
• John J. Smith House