Concord usually gets attention for its past. Even Louisa May Alcott worried that her town was “degenerating into a museum of revolutionary relics.” She, of course, belonged to an intellectual event that gave a second chapter to Concord’s celebrated history, but the Concordian of today is liable to feel that everything great belongs to the past.
In 1976, Concordians and school administrators Barbara Elliot and Janet Jones published the text Concord: Its Black History, 1636-1860 through the Concord Public Schools. The text included photos of Black and White children visiting places associated with 19th century [and earlier] Black residents.
It was cold outside, but the glowing fire in the brick oven warmed the kitchen as Elizabeth busied herself baking the week’s bread for her enslavers, Col. John Ashley and his wife Hannah. Her younger sister Lizzie, also enslaved in the Ashley household, was too frail for heavy labor, so she watched as Elizabeth stirred the fire with an iron shovel. A
To visit The Old Manse – an elegant, thirteen-room colonial built on the banks of the Concord River in 1770 – is to experience pivotal moments in our nation’s history.
The Umbrella Arts Center has set the stage for a bold season of artistic and cultural programs exploring the experience of being Black in America, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
It remains a moral, political, and economic necessity to understand America’s underground railroad’s origin and legacy.1 The Wayside in Concord, Massachusetts provides us with an inside view into this history. The Wayside is part of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. The NPS program “commemorates and preserves the historical significance of the Underground Railroad which sought to address the injustices of slavery and make freedom a reality in the United States and is a crucial element in the evolution of our national civil rights movement. Inhabitants of The Wayside house have witnessed a dramatic spectrum of American history including the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.”2
In her pioneering book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845), writer and thinker Margaret Fuller articulated the goal of women’s progress in America: “We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man.” Spoken seventy-five years before women had the legal right to vote, Fuller’s words served as a rallying cry for generations of people who fought to live and work as they pleased.
The Robbins House – Concord’s African American History started with a map. Local resident Maria Madison, PhD, who would go on to co-found the the nonprofit organization, The Robbins House Inc., noticed streets in Concord named after early Black residents such as Bristers Hill (33), Peter Spring (27), and Jennie Dugan (39) Roads. Who were these people? Dr. Madison and a few other Concord METCO (Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity) family friends created a map of Concord’s African American history so that students of color from Boston and Concord could see their own history reflected in this storied town. When the Robbins House, a residence which occupied two locations (23 & 24) from 1823-2007, was threatened with demolition, The Robbins House nonprofit was formed to save, move, and restore the building as a center for telling Concord’s lesser-known Black history.
On the morning of April 19, 1775, 71-year-old Martha Moulton witnessed a terrifying scene: hundreds of red-coated British Regulars marching into the town of Concord. These men were on orders from British General Thomas Gage to seize and destroy contraband military supplies stockpiled by the Provincial Congress. The ensuing conflict between the Regulars and Provincials sparked the American Revolution.
When you hear the words ‘Walden Pond’ you probably think of Henry David Thoreau and his cabin in the woods. If you’ve been here, you might also think of the many hiking trails and sandy little coves surrounding the gin-clear water of the pond where tens of thousands of people enjoy swimming and walking each season.
What you might not think about is the community of formerly enslaved people who once lived near Walden. Not because it was the beautiful, tranquil scene we flock to today, but because it was considered an infertile, out of the way, undesirable piece of land to Concord’s white population.
As Elise Lemire writes in her excellent book Black Walden, as many as fifteen formerly enslaved people ‘made a life for themselves in Walden Woods, enough that Henry David Thoreau could describe their community as a “small village.”’
