2025 MPA Meeting House Trip

On Thursday, May 1 students joined MPA members to travel to the Museum of African-American History located in Beacon Hill, Boston. The tour began in the African Meeting House, which is recognized as the oldest Black Church in the United States. Next, we visited the Abiel Smith School, the first building established for education equality for Black students. Students learned about the need and establishment of discrimination-free places to meet, worship and receive education and hear the pivotal role Bostonians played in the Abolitionist movement.  Figures such as Primus Hall, Lewis Hayden,  William Lloyd Garrison, Maria Stewart and David Walker came to life and students were able to stand on the same floors as Frederick Douglass. After lunch, students walked through parts of the Black Heritage Trail's Beacon Hill neighborhoods where Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth came and stayed. At Saint-Gauden's "Shaw Memorial," students stood in the same spot the 54^th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment of Black volunteer Union soldiers departed from in 1863 and considered both the courage of the men and the memorialization through public art. The trip concluded with a walk to Hank William Thomas' "Embrace" sculpture in Boston Common. It was a beautiful day reflecting on the importance of preserving Boston's historic spaces where a diverse group of men and women worked together to influence the moral climate of the nation and helped shape American history.