In Boston, on the north slope of Beacon Hill, is the African Meeting House, now part of the Museum of African American Heritage and a stop along the Black Heritage Trail.
The meeting house is located on Smith Court, a small dead end road off Joy Street. It is best to park the car at an area parking garage (Boston Common Garage is one place), then find Joy Street, off Beacon Street or Cambridge Street. Smith Court in on the north slope of the hill, about halfway down.
The meeting house is on the left side, along side the Smith School, which is also part of the museum. Follow the signs to the entrance in the school building. After paying the modest admission ($5 in 2014), a National Park Ranger will take you to the inside of the meeting house.
The building is a brick building, three stories tall, with tall glass windows, with a peaked roof. Inside, the main assembly room is a simply decorated space. There are pews on the main floor below, and a balcony with seats above. The lower pews are curved. There is a center aisle. At the front end is the pulpit, which is raised relative to the floor and set back into an alcove.
The museum web site claims that this building is the oldest black church edifice still standing in the United States. The meeting house was built in 1806, from funds raised by Rev. Thomas Paul, who became the first minister to the First African Baptist Church that met there. The building became the center of the entire community that was comprised of free and fugitive African-Americans and hardcore abolitionists.
There is a lot to tell about this site - here are some highlights that happened here(from the museum web site):
- The founding of the New England Anti-Slavery Society by William Lloyd Garrison in 1832;
- The 1833 farewell address of Maria Stewart, a black woman and the first American born woman to speak publicly before a gender-mixed audience;
- An 1860 anti-slavery speech by Frederick Douglass given after being run out of Tremont Temple;
- The 1863 recruitment to the MA 54th Regiment led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.
By 1900, the African-American community had moved on to other parts of the city. In 1905, the building was sold and used as a Jewish Synagogue until the 1972, when it was sold to be part of the museum. The building has gone through major renovations and has been returned to how it appeared in 1854. Much of what is visible is original, including the bare wood flooring, which was actually from a previous church, that was built in the mid 1700s (thus the floor is older than the building!).
I have been to this place twice and heard two speeches from NPS Rangers and each speech was totally different. One speech emphasized the activities of the abolitionists and resisting the Fugitive Slave Law, and the other emphasized the efforts by members to make changes in opinion and legislation to abolish slavery and argue for equal rights. If I go a few more times, I might get the whole topic.
Sources:
Museum of African-American History (Beacon Hill):
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visit link)