Researching Black History at the BPL

A guide on researching Black American history at the BPL and beyond

Introduction

Want to learn history where it happened? Check out these Black historic sites throughout New England.

Image Right: The sign for the African Meeting House (1806), which is the oldest extant black church building in the nation. Built by free African American artisans, the Meeting House is the last stop on the Black Heritage Trail®. Once a church, a school, and vital community meeting place, the African Meeting House has been returned to its 1855 appearance through historic restoration and is open to the public. (Text via The Museum of African American History)

Museums, Historic Sites, and Heritage Trails

Museum of African American History
New England’s largest museum dedicated to preserving, conserving and interpreting the contributions of African Americans, with locations in Boston and Nantucket.
The National Center for Afro-American Artists
The NCAAA is dedicated to the celebration, exhibition, collection, and criticism of black visual arts heritage worldwide. Founded in 1968 by Elma Ina Lewis, the NCAAA was a center that combined the best in teaching and professional performance while affirming a populist commitment to arts accessibility and ethnic heritage. The center supported professional companies in dance and music and worked with hundreds of children in the Boston area, emphasizing character-building and multi-disciplinary instruction. Today, the Museum of NCAAA, headed by Dr. Barry Gaither, presents a wide range of historical and contemporary exhibitions in many media including painting, sculpture, graphics, photography, and decorative arts.
Prudence Crandall Museum
The Prudence Crandall Museum is a National Historic Landmark located in Canterbury, CT. In 1832, Crandall, the white principal of the Canterbury Female Boarding School, was approached by a young Black woman named Sarah Harris asking to attend the school. Crandall agreed to admit Harris. When residents protested the school’s integration, Crandall closed her school and reopened in 1833 for non-white students. Students traveled from several states. Connecticut responded by passing the “Black Law,” which prevented out-of-state Black and Brown people from attending school in Connecticut towns without local town approval. Crandall was arrested, spent one night in jail, and faced three court trials before the case was dismissed. In September 1834, a nighttime mob attack closed the school. These events made national and international news in the 1830s and galvanized the burgeoning Abolitionist movement. "Crandall v. Connecticut" impacted two U.S. Supreme Court decisions and laid the framework for the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
National Black Doll Museum of History & Culture
The National Black Doll Museum of History And Culture is a brick-and-mortar museum dedicated to the art, craft, history, and preservation of Black dolls. The Museum has a three-fold mission: to nurture self-esteem, promote cultural diversity, and preserve black dolls’ history by educating the public on their significance.
The Ruby & Calvin Fletcher African American History Museum
This Stratford, CT museum presents a collection of artifacts that reflect decades of turbulent times for African Americans in the United States during the period of slavery and the Civil Rights movement.

Image Above: The Prudence Crandall Museum. Image via Mystic Country CT on Flickr.

The Royall House and Slave Quarters
The home of one of the richest families in New England and the enslaved Africans who made their lives possible, the Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters were built in 1732-1739. The House is one of the finest 18th-century buildings in New England; the Slave Quarters are the only such structure in the Northern United States. Both the buildings and grounds are a National Historic Landmark. Together, these unique structures tell the intertwined stories of liberty and bondage, independence and slavery, as they have been played out not only in Colonial times but throughout American history.
Travel Amistad
This series of sites includes Austin F. Williams Carriagehouse, the First Church of Christ, and Hartford's Old Statehouse. The Amistad was a Spanish schooner taken over by a group of captured Africans seeking to escape impending slavery in Cuba. It became a symbol in the United States in the movement to abolish slavery.
W. E. B. Du Bois National Historic Site
A collaborative project to identify and interpret those sites in and around Great Barrington, MA
that were influential in the life of W.E.B. Du Bois.
The Du Bois Freedom Center
The mission of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center for Freedom and Democracy is to educate the public about the life and legacy of civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois and the rich African American heritage of the Berkshires. Located at the former Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church in Great Barrington, where he was born and raised, this vibrant center of Black thought and remembrance constitutes the first museum and living memorial in North America dedicated to Du Bois’ life and legacy.
The Robbins House
The Robbins House in Concord, MA was the childhood home of early Civil Rights activist Ellen Robbins Garrison. Ellen, the daughter and granddaughter of men who had been enslaved, spent her life educating newly freed people and fighting for their civil rights.
Abyssinian Meeting House
Located in Portland, Maine and built 1828-1831 by free African-Americans, ithe Abyssinian Meeting House is Maine's oldest African-American church building and the third oldest in the nation.
Network to Freedom: Places of the Underground Railroad
The Network to Freedom currently contains over 740 locations nationwide with a verifiable connection to the Underground Railroad. These locations include sites, facilities and programs, most of which can be visited. The link to the interactive map below includes the locations of those open to the public and/or include public information about properties.

Image Above: The Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, Massachusetts. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

New England African American Archaeology Lab

The New England African American Archaeology Laboratory (NEAAAL) at UMass Boston is dedicated to fully telling the story of Black life in New England through archaeological research. They aim to increase the visibility of Black people in the past by providing UMass Boston Anthropology students with academic training in the archaeological study of the African Diaspora and hands-on experience with the curation of archaeological collections that document the presence and history of free Black communities in Massachusetts during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

National Black Heritage Organizations

African American Civil Rights Network
A program of the National Park Service, the African American Civil Rights Network encompasses properties, facilities, and interpretive programs, all of which present a comprehensive narrative of the people, places, and events associated with African American Civil Rights movement in the United States.
Teaching with Historic Places
Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) offers teaching tools and lesson plans to help educators engage young people with powerful stories representing America’s diverse history. Historic places in National Parks and in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places enliven history, social studies, geography, civics, and other subjects.
The Association of African American Museums
The Association of African American Museums (AAAM) is a non-profit member organization established to support African and African American focused museums nationally and internationally, as well as the professionals who protect, preserve and interpret African and African American art, history and culture.
Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)
The founders of Black History Month, The Association for the Study of African American Life and History is a learned society dedicated to the study and appreciation of African-American History.
The African American Heritage Preservation Foundation
The African American Heritage Preservation Foundation, Inc. has been engaged in activities that include the preservation, maintenance, and awareness of endangered or little-known African American historical sites in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast Regions. In addition, the African American Heritage Preservation Foundation, Inc. acts as a resource center for community groups, preservationists, genealogical and historical societies, not-for-profit organizations and government entities, nation-wide, needing assistance in the preservation of African American historical sites and history.
National Museum of African American History & Culture
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It was established by an Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Americans. To date, the Museum has collected more than 40,000 artifacts and nearly 100,000 individuals have become members. The Museum opened to the public on September 24, 2016, as the 19th museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund
A project of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, this fund and grant program seeks to support organizations that are working on projects that preserve Black cultural heritage sites.

Image Above: This life-sized display shows four African-American college students sitting at a Woolworth's lunch counter, in a peaceful protest against being denied service due to segregation policies. Courtesy of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee.