These include the African Meeting House , the oldest standing black church in the United States. The historical site is located on Beacon Hill , a neighborhood just north of Boston Common. The site was designated in to "preserve and commemorate original buildings that housed the nineteenth-century free African-American community on Beacon Hill.
He said:. The two bills that I will sign today represent a three-pronged effort to preserve a vital, but long neglected, part of American heritage; the history and culture of Americans of African ancestry and their role in the history of our nation.
Boston's first African residents arrived as slaves in with early colonists. Over time, more of their descendants were born free to white mothers; in other cases slaveholders freed slaves for service.
After the American Revolutionary War , Massachusetts effectively abolished slavery by the terms of its new constitution. By the census, no slaves were recorded in Massachusetts. Subsequently, a sizable community of free Blacks and escaped slaves developed in Boston, settling on the north face of Beacon Hill, and in the North End.
With a strong abolitionist community, Boston was long considered a desirable destination for southern Black slaves escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad. African Americans became activists in the abolition movement , also working to gain racial equality and educational parity with whites. They engaged in political processes to meet their objectives. The North End became a center of Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
