African Meeting House Research Essay
African Meeting House Research Paper
Established December 4, 1806, the African Meeting House, referred to in the larger community as the Black Faneuil Hall, is now the oldest standing African American church in the United States. The Meeting House is located on 8 Smith Court on Beacon Hill and is a site of the walking tour of the Black Heritage Trail, which traces the history of African Americans in Boston. The facade of the African Meeting House is an adaptation of a design for a townhouse published by Boston architect Asher Benjamin.
After the Revolutionary War the movement by African Americans to build and maintain their own church led to the foundation of the Meeting House. In White churches they were discriminated against so they started attending informal services led by a Black minister named Thomas Paul of New Hampshire. Paul and twenty of his members founded the First African Baptist Church in 1805. The church was built using labor and donations from the Black community and White abolitionist. Cato Gardner raised fifteen hundred dollars toward the total seventy-seven hundred dollars needed. Above the front door there is an inscription that reads, “Cato Gardner, first Promoter of this Building 1806.”
Land was purchased on the West End and one year later the African Meeting House was built. Originally intended for religious services it quickly became a central political and social institution for Blacks on Beacon Hill. It was also a school for Black children but then the Abiel Smith School was built, which is also a site on the Black Heritage Trail. The Meeting House was a safe forum for Blacks to discuss their issues, such as racism, equality, education, and they held anti-slavery meetings. This place was the canter of the abolition movement in the nineteenth century.
On January 6, 1832, William Lloyd Garrison founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society here. There were many speakers on the floor of the Meeting House. Maria Stewart, abolitionist and woman’s rights activist, was the first woman to speak before a mixed audience on political issues. A few other speakers were, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and David Walker.
The African Meeting House was remodeled by the congregation in the 1850s. At the end of the 19th century, when the black community began to migrate from the West End to the South End and Roxbury, the building was sold to a Jewish...