African Meeting House
Federal-style Black church hall of eighteen-oh-six, hub of abolitionist organizing and the nation's oldest surviving Black church building.
This guide to the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill in Boston centers on David Walker, a free Black clothing dealer in the congregation here who in 1829 wrote a pamphlet, his Appeal, that terrified the slaveholding South. You'll hear how sailors smuggled copies south in their coats and sea chests, and how Georgia and other states responded with a bounty and new laws aimed at stopping it from spreading. The guide follows Walker as he kept selling clothes on Beacon Hill and turned down a chance at safe passage to Canada, and the abolitionist society founded in this hall not long after.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.