In Concord, a bid to save tie to abolitionist days

Source: Boston Globe

CONCORD - Amid such historical touchstones as Walden Pond and the Old North Bridge, the quaint cottage barely merits a second glance, just another Revolutionary-era New England house in a town steeped in the past.

But the brown shingled house on Bedford Street, built in the 1780s by the town’s first freed slave, is the last of its kind, a crucial but long-forgotten link to the town’s early black community and abolitionist movement. With the house in danger of being demolished, its history has emerged from obscurity, and advocates have mounted a spirited campaign to stave off its demise.

...

While tourists flock to Concord for its famed battle sites, cemeteries, and homes of literary giants, the town’s history of slavery, and the lives of former slaves and their descendants, is sadly overlooked, local historians say. Bringing it to light, they said, would help make the town’s storied history whole.

“It’s really the only physical structure left that links to that era,’’ said Polly Attwood, a member of The Drinking Gourd Project, whose name was inspired by a spiritual song that once instructed fugitive slaves to head to freedom in the North by following the Big Dipper, symbolized by a gourd.





Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/09/14/11th_hour_push_to_save_a_slice_of_concords_past/

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Interesting history I didn't know about- The Drinking Gourd- song about following the Big Dipper to the north.

The building is also closely associated with the abolitionist movement, and once hosted a meeting of the local Female Anti-Slavery Society.

Hope they are able to save it.

also a tiny remnant of a settlement of runaway slaves in the heart of Brooklyn, that preservationists are trying to save.

tourists and history buffs flock -and spend $$!
Henry Thoreau also was affected by the anti-slavery/ abolitionist movement around him in Concord and it certainly affected his outlook on civil disobedience, and tax resistance to a corrupt (slavery allowing) government.
Come on Concord, save this place.

...wandering our way back north from the DeCordova Sculpture Park
and Museum. Among Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, and a few surrounding
towns, you could easily spend several days visiting actual American history.

Tesha

It would be a crime to tear down such an important landmark!

Sorry I'm in no mood to be conciliatory to those racist assholes!
yes I know there are plenty of enlightened southerners... SO WHY DON'T YOU FUCKING VOTE?!

Texans bitch that texas has a bad rap... THAT'S BECAUSE IT'S TRUE!
If you want better representation FUCKING FIGHT FOR IT!

*huff huff*

pretty house.
I hope it gets preserved and restored.