Governor-elect Deval Patrick and Mayor Thomas Menino joined African American community leaders yesterday to remember Boston’s role in the abolitionist movement and celebrate the African Meeting House, one of Boston’s national landmarks, on its bicentennial.
Located on Beacon Hill, the African Meeting House at the Tremont Temple Baptist Church is the nation’s oldest black church edifice and is where abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society. It is also where the creation of the 54th Colored Regiment was announced during the Civil War.
The African Meeting House served as a school, religious center and community gathering point for the black community in the 19th century, when discrimination was at its peak in the United States.
Menino said he thinks the building and its role as a meeting place “helped Massachusetts become the first state in the country to abolish slavery.”
Chair of the Museum of African History Maria Riveto said the event was “only the beginning” of a celebratory year of learning.
While Governor-elect Deval Patrick said little at the ceremony, he did speak the words of Frederick Douglass, who supported the anti-slavery movement born in the African Meeting House.
Though the building was converted to a Jewish synagogue in the 20th century, the building was bought in 1972 and turned into the Museum of African American History, and has since been working to restore it to its original condition.
Riveto and Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation said the second stage of renovations in the site’s restoration is set to begin in January 2007. They added the $7 million project is being funded by local groups and individuals who want to see the landmark turned into a museum.
To uphold the night’s theme — remembering the past while looking toward the future — performers played traditional African drums down the aisle of the church and sang renditions of songs once used to mark the way on the Underground Railroad.
“It is important to know where you are and where you have been,” Harvard Divinity School Reverend Peter Gomes told the assembled audience.
Rev. Michael Haynes, senior pastor at Boston’s Twelfth Baptist Church, called for communicating Boston’s extensive African American history to a younger generation.
“Wisdom speaks loudly,” he said. “It says that we study this history and that we teach it to our children and our children’s children.”
Riveto said the African American Meeting House holds great potential for teaching Bostonians and all Americans about sacrifice and freedom.
“I believe if this country knew this history it would be a very different nation,” she said.