Exhibits & Events:
Abolitionist Trail Map
Click on the numbers to learn about
significant places along the Abolitionist Trail.
1. Museum of Afro-American History 46 Joy Street
Site of Words of Thunder: William Lloyd Garrison and the Ambassadors of Abolition (August 8, 2005-December 31, 2005)
The Museum's Boston campus includes the African Meeting House and the Abiel Smith School, two of the most important meeting places for black and white abolitionists during the antebellum years. In 1826, Boston blacks formed the first anti-slavery society in New England, the Massachusetts General Colored Association. The congregation at the African Meeting House would provide space on the evening of January 6, 1832, when William Lloyd Garrison and 11 other white men signed the Constitution of the New England Anti-Slavery Society in the African Meeting House; the following day, five black Bostonians also signed the document.
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2. William Cooper Nell's Boardinghouse 3 Smith Court
William C. Nell (1816-1874) was William Lloyd Garrison's leading African American colleague in the anti-slavery movement. Nell, who as a young boy witnessed the creation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society while peering through the window of the African Meeting House, boarded at 3 Smith Court from 1850 to 1865. He worked in The Liberator office and published many articles about Boston's black community in the paper; was a leading figure in the movements of the 1840s and '50s to establish equal rights for African Americans in public education and the military; became the nation's first published African American historian in 1851; and was hired as a postal clerk in 1861, becoming the first African American to hold a federal position.
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3. Robert Gould Shaw and 54th Regiment Memorial Corner of Park and Beacon Streets
The memorial commemorates the valiant 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first black regiment recruited in the North. Among the recruiters for the regiment were noted black abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond, and William Wells Brown. Col. Robert Gould Shaw, the affluent white Boston abolitionist, and 61 members of the regiment were killed in the courageous assault on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863. Harriet Tubman was present at the dedication of the monument in 1897.
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4. Park Street Church Corner of Park and Tremont Streets
It was here that the young William Lloyd Garrison delivered his first anti-slavery address on July 4, 1829. In this speech, Garrison argued not only for the abolition of slavery but for equal citizenship rights for African Americans. Shortly after this radical speech, Garrison moved to Baltimore to work on an anti-slavery newspaper. He returned permanently to Boston in 1830, publishing the first issue of The Liberator on January 1, 1831.
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5. Wendell Phillips Statue Boston Public Garden, Boylston Street Mall
Born into a wealthy Boston family, Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) dedicated his life to transforming American society. Converted to Garrisonian abolition by his future wife, Phillips was Garrison's closest associate for many years. As "abolition's golden trumpet," Phillips spoke eloquently against slavery and in favor of abolition across the North. He continued to work for African American equality after the Civil War until the ratification of the 15th Amendment, which granted voting rights to African Americans.
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6. Charles Sumner Statue Boston Public Garden, Boylston Street Mall
Abolitionist Charles Sumner (1811-1874) was a Boston lawyer and later a U.S. senator. As a lawyer, he joined Robert Morris, the nation's second black attorney, to persuasively but unsuccessfully argue before the Massachusetts chief justice for integration of Boston public schools in 1849. As a senator, Sumner was a forceful anti-slavery advocate, introducing legislation that led to both the 13th Amendment, which officially abolished slavery, and the Freedmen's Bureau.
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7. William Lloyd Garrison Statue Commonwealth Avenue between Exeter and Dartmouth Streets
William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), visionary editor of The Liberator, was the preeminent voice for the immediate abolition of slavery in the United States and worked in concert with black abolitionists to advance their mutual cause. Garrison was also involved in creating and participating in anti-slavery organizations in the United States and England. Although best known for his anti-slavery activism, Garrison was engaged in other social reform movements of his time, including women's rights, Native American rights, temperance, and pacifism.
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8. Boston Public Library 700 Boylston Street
Site of Words of Thunder: The Life and Times of William Lloyd Garrison (August 8, 2005-October 27, 2005)
Established in 1848, the Boston Public Library was the first publicly supported municipal library in America, and the first public library to allow people to borrow books and materials, a truly revolutionary concept at the time. Today, the BPL has more than 6 million books and houses one of the country's largest collections of anti-slavery manuscripts and publications, including the papers of William Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, Theodore Parker, and Maria Weston Chapman; the records of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and the American Anti-Slavery Society; and a full run of The Liberator (1831-1865).
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