Boston, MA
The history of enslavement at Boston’s Freedom Trail sites is beginning to be told
Advisory: This project contains descriptions of violence and dehumanizing language to reflect the horrors that Black people and Native Americans were routinely subjected to during the era of American history when slavery was common. We recognize such language may distress some readers. Discretion is advised.
A narrow red brick path winds through the sidewalks of downtown Boston, connecting 17 historic sites tied to the city’s colonial history as the incubator of the American Revolution.
But the red line of the Freedom Trail also could symbolize the blood of enslaved people who helped make that revolution possible.
Boston is a cradle of American history, and 4 million people a year visit the historic churches, graveyards and parks that make up the Freedom Trail to learn more about the country’s origins.
But rarely do they hear the underbelly of that story: that slavery touched nearly every aspect of the society and the economy of Massachusetts during that period of time.
In the 1700s, enslaved people likely accounted for about 10% of Boston’s population, according to the city’s tally. An unnamed French writer visiting Boston in 1687 wrote, “You may … own Negroes and Negresses; there is not a House in Boston, however small may be its means, that has not one or two.”
The malicious tentacles of slavery in the Bay State were widespread, although Massachusetts was not home to the massive agricultural plantations like the Southern colonies.
Boston thrived on shipping that involved transporting enslaved people or the products of their labor. The colony had a huge rum industry, made possible by the sugar harvested in the slavery-riddled Caribbean. And enslaved people in Central and South America mined the silver that Paul Revere used to manufacture his iconic kitchenware.
And those connections can be tied directly to sites along the 2.5-mile Freedom Trail: in the wood harvested by enslaved workers to build the USS Constitution; in the unmarked graves at Boston’s old cemeteries; and in the history of Boston Latin School, where enslaver Nathaniel Williams served as one of the first schoolmasters.
In most cases, these connections are rarely talked about. Joe Bagley, the city’s archaeologist, says many people don’t realize how slavery was systemic in 18th century Massachusetts.
“We kind of give ourselves a lot of credit for being the first state to banish slavery,’’ he said. “But we were also the first state to make it legal.”
Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery, with the adoption of the 1641 “Body of Liberties,” which set out the rules under which a person could be enslaved. Slavery was abolished in the 1780s through a series of court cases brought by enslaved people.
L’Merchie Frazier, former director of education and interpretation for Boston’s Museum of African American History, says the interpretation of the historic sites on the trail, installed in the 1950s, has completely ignored the role of Black people.
“Whose freedom are we trailing and are we tracing as we walk on those bricks?” she asked.
“Whose freedom are we trailing and are we tracing as we walk on those bricks?”
L’Merchie Frazier, former director of education and interpretation for Boston’s Museum of African American History
GBH News reporters worked with a group of Boston University journalism students to document the lesser known history of slavery at each of the sites along the Freedom Trail. For several months, students dug into archives and worked with researchers to piece together information. Some of the sites have done a lot of this work themselves and were able to share their findings; others, like the Old Corner Bookstore and the Boston Common, are essentially unmanaged and required students to dig through troves of documents and read historical texts looking for clues. While very little of what was found was previously unknown, there’s no easily accessible place to find all the information collected in one place.
Suzanne Segura Taylor, the executive director of the Freedom Trail Foundation, said her organization has long trained guides to mention slavery on the tour.
For example, the training materials direct guides to discuss the small grave marker beside the tomb of John Hancock, a two-time Massachusetts governor made famous for his signature on the Declaration of Independence. The small grave carries the name of “Frank,” described as a servant of Hancock’s and who was almost certainly enslaved, historians agree.
“Those are the things we say that must be talked about,” she said.
But she said more can be done to elevate the story of Boston’s slave history, and she hopes to share GBH’s findings with her tour guides.
The Freedom Trail Foundation is just one of countless organizations leading tours of the historic sites. Last month, a GBH News reporter took a 2.5-hour walking tour with a private company that covered all 17 sites and never once mentioned slavery.
“There’s a lot of people out there conducting tours that we don’t know what their outlines are, what they’re required to discuss on their tours,” Taylor said.
Frazier said the story that tourists hear about colonial Boston depends on who their guide is.
“Previously on the Freedom Trail, the only mention of any Black person was Crispus Attucks — and not his history, just that he died on March the 5th, 1770,” she said.
Attucks, the first person killed in the Boston Massacre on that day, is buried with other victims under a commemorative stone in the Granary Burying Ground, beside revolutionary leader Samuel Adams. GBH followed several tours through the burial ground and the massacre site and heard no mention that Attucks — the child of an enslaved Black father and a Native American mother — had once been enslaved and advertised as a runaway.
Frazier also points out that the story of enslaved people in Boston is not just a story of victimhood. It is also the story of people working together to educate themselves, learn skills and try to build wealth — and fight for their freedom. It was “a strategized, networked, organized movement to secure their voices, their land, their property,” she said. “If you leave out that narrative, that expanded narrative, of Black and Indigenous people here, you have really done a woeful job of delivering history. Especially in terms of considering the principles of democracy.”
While there is a growing acknowledgement of the city’s ties to slavery on the Freedom Trail, the public-facing recognition of it is intermittent. For example, organizers at King’s Chapel, a stone chapel founded in 1686, launched an effort a few years ago to grapple with its history. Many of the founding members, and many of the donors to the construction of the church, were slaveholders, slave traders or otherwise made their money from the the woek of enslaved people.
Signs around the church now explain those connections, and the chapel recently approved a massive transformation to install a monument to the 219 enslaved people linked to the congregation’s history.
But just outside the church, the city-owned King’s Chapel Burying Ground provides no details about slavery on its signs, even though some of the most illustrious names on its tombstones commemorate people who owned slaves, including John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts.
A “First Governor” plaque in the burial ground marks the family tomb and tells the story of Winthrop’s career, noting that he was “considered religious, prudent, conscientious and pious.” No mention is made of the fact that the governor sent soldiers to sack a Pequot settlement in 1627, taking hundreds of Native American prisoners, many of whom Winthrop sold, gave away as slaves, or kept for himself.
Beth Anne Bower, credited as the historical research consultant on those signs, told GBH News that when the placards were made two decades ago, exploring slavery connections “was not the conversation.” Instead, she says, she was encouraged to focus on the “diversity” of people buried there, highlighting women business owners and French migrants.
The current recognition that “we should start confronting this history” was not part of the mission for those signs, she said. “It should have been.”
Walking past the site of Boston Latin School — the oldest school in the nation — visitors would not learn that Nathaniel Williams, one of the school’s first schoolmasters, enslaved two people identified as Richard and Hagar. This fact is not mentioned on the school’s own website or on the mural painted on the sidewalk on School Street, which is named for Boston Latin. But these key details are available on other city websites.
Increasingly, the sites along the Freedom Trail — which are curated by different groups, including the National Park Service, the city of Boston, individual congregations and standalone nonprofits — have begun telling the stories of the foundation of enslavement that the city’s history stands upon.
The USS Constitution Museum in Charlestown, which receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, leads visitors through a hands-on description of how the ship was conceived and built.
Dr. Carl Herzog, the historian at the museum, told Boston University students that the “live oak” — a particualry impregnable species of wood — that the Navy sought to build the boat in the 1790s came from Georgia’s St. Simons Island, where it was harvested by enslaved workers. In a blog post published on the museum website late last year, Herzog detailed the use of this wood: “Paying enslavers for the forced labor of enslaved people was an expediency that Navy officials and contractors saw as fundamental to the job. Thus, enslaved people were essential to the construction of naval warships built to secure the very American freedoms they were denied.”
The museum exhibit includes a modern life-sized photo of a Black man dressed as an “enslaved” worker carrying an axe. The attached sign says “I hate this work. My master earns top dollar for my toil, but me, what do I get… [White workers] left. I don’t have that choice. Got nowhere to run.”
Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung in the steeple “one if by land, two if by sea” to launch Paul Revere’s famous ride, has rewritten its own materials to expose the slave ties of the donors who funded that steeple.
The Old State House has an exhibit about the petitions enslaved people submitted to the Legislature in the 1700s asking for their liberation and reparations.
Stepping off the Freedom Trail, visitors can find even more of this history.
The National Park Service leads tours on a 10-stop Black Heritage Trail that features an alternate slate of sites curated by the Museum of African American History, including the African Meeting House — the nation’s oldest Black church building — and the John J. Smith House, home to a leading abolitionist who helped liberate Shardrach Minkins, an enslaved man from Virginia arrested in Boston in 1851 under the Fugitive Slave Act.
And the city of Boston has unveiled an exhibit inside Faneuil Hall to document some of the enslaved people who lived here and to highlight “Boston’s Complicity” in the slave trade. The location was chosen specifically to elevate the fact that Peter Faneuil, who built the building donated to Boston in 1742, was one of the most active slave traders in the colony.
Some social justice leaders, like Imari Paris Jefferies, chief executive of Embrace Boston, who led the 2022 installation of the new civil rights memorial on the Boston Common, say this recognition is long overdue.
“To have more of these historic and legacy institutions on the Freedom Trail tell a holistic story about Boston’s — and America’s by default — involvement and engagement in this dark part of our history is an important part of reconciliation,” he said.
This story was reported with the assistance of a Boston University Journalism class led by professor Brooke Williams. The students who participated are Serena Ata, Tanisha Bhat, James Buckser, Clara Cho, Cassandra Dumay, Mitch Fink, Sofie Gavin-Melamed, Kajsa Kedefors, Westray Keele, Amisha Kumar, Talia Lissauer, Eden Mor, Brendan Nordstrom, Bella Ramirez, Jessie Sage O’Leary, Lindsay Shachnow and Stella Tannenbaum.
GBH News intern Colette Lauture, also contributed reporting, as did GBH News Education Editor Meg Woolhouse. GBH News Editors Jenifer McKim and Lisa Wardle edited, and Wardle also built the digital components.
Boston, MA
Nine ways to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day around Boston – The Boston Globe
SMALL ACTS, BIG IMPACTS: A DAY OF SERVICE From Saturday to Monday, give back to the community with the Discovery Museum’s “Day of Service” in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day’s designation as a National Day of Service. Donate or collect supplies for the Welcome Basket drive, and make a warm welcome card in support of the Refugee and Immigrant Assistance Center. Donations for these care packages — including cleaning and laundry supplies, hygiene products, infant care items, and winter clothing — will go to immigrant or refugee families in need of essential daily items. Free admission. Jan. 18-20, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., 177 Main St., Acton. discoveryacton.org
MLK DAY CONCERT — VOTING WITH PURPOSE AND WITHOUT FEAR On Sunday, the Association of Black Citizens of Lexington is hosting a concert in honor of MLK Jr. Day and in celebration of the lives of Martin Luther King Jr. and activist Fannie Lou Hamer. Both civil rights leaders were integral in the fight for equal voting rights and access to ballots for all voters. Enjoy songs of spirituality and freedom — performed by Brother Dennis and Friends — as an homage to the songs that motivated those at the Meredith March Against Fear in 1966 and many other civil rights activists of the 1960s. Tickets are $25. Jan. 19, 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m. Follen Church, 755 Mass. Ave., Lexington. eventbrite.com
EMBRACE HONORS MLK On Sunday, Embrace Boston hosts Embrace Honors MLK 2025, a formal evening of joy, music, and community. Leaders to be honored include former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and first lady Lauren Baker, and former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and first lady Diane Patrick. Hosts include Melisa Valdez, in-arena host for the Boston Celtics, and Latoyia Edwards, Emmy-winning anchor from NBC 10 Boston. DJ Envy, DJ Papadon, and the Berklee All Star Jazz Band are among the entertainers booked. Tickets are $450. Jan. 19. 6:30 p.m.-midnight. Big Night Live, 110 Causeway St. embraceboston.org
PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. CELEBRATION The Peabody Essex Museum will honor the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday with a variety of art installations. View the works of Bethany Collins (”America: A Hymnal”), David Boxer (”The Black Books”), and Alison Saar’s (”Weight)”. Starting at 11 a.m., join fluid acrylics artist Rahim Gray to learn the way he incorporates social justice and music in his work and to make pour art of your own. Free admission. Jan. 20, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. 161 Essex St., Salem. pem.org
ISABELLA STEWART GARDNER MUSEUM — MLK JR. DAY OF SERVICE Visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Monday to stroll its galleries, hear storytellers, and participate in activities. Featured exhibits include performance artist Dzidzor’s soundscape “Riot: A Sermon of Anger, Dreams, and Love,” Crystal Bi’s “Dream Portal” hands-on installation, and a performance by Amanda Shea and musician Wylsner Bastien of “Why We Still Dream” at Calderwood Hall. Free admission. Jan. 20, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way. gardnermuseum.org
CELEBRATE! WITH GEORGE RUSSELL JR. AND FRIENDS The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum hosts a Monday performance of some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s favorite songs by George Russell Jr. and Friends. The event is free to the public per the support of the Martin Richard Foundation and the Mass Cultural Council. Jan. 20, 10:30.-11:30 a.m. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point. eventbrite.com
MFA BOSTON OPEN HOUSE, MLK DAY In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and the communal and artistic spirit of the holiday, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston will offer free admission Monday to any visitors with a Massachusetts ZIP code. Within the museum, view ArtSpark’s “Radical Heroes” program and make your own window-hanging at the “Stained Glass: Doves” station. The museum offers several other performances and talks; see the website for the schedule. Jan. 20. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave. mfa.org
BOSTON CHILDREN’S CHORUS — ROAD TO FREEDOM This year’s Boston Children’s Chorus MLK Day program educates about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, two civil rights leaders who are often perceived as ideologically unaligned, though the interconnectedness between the two is more complex. The “Road to Freedom” program at Symphony Hall on Monday is designed to educate the Boston community on the similarities between the two activists, and the vital role both hold in shaping social movements of the past and present. $15-$75. Jan. 20, 4 p.m. Symphony Hall, 301 Mass. Ave. bso.org
ANNUAL MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. CELEBRATION Join the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras and the Boston community for a celebratory program of memorable performances on Monday. The two-hour program, presented in conjunction with the Museum of African American History, will include spiritual and cultural performances, spoken word and readings, and guest speakers. Free admission. Jan. 20. Starts at 1 p.m. Strand Theatre, 543 Columbia Road. eventbrite.com
Haley Clough can be reached at haley.clough@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @hcloughjournalism.
Boston, MA
Boston Celtics vs. Toronto Raptors: Where to watch free NBA live stream
A pair of division foes in the Eastern Conference meet up on Wednesday, Jan. 15 when the Boston Celtics travel to take on the Toronto Raptors at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto.
The game is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. EST and will be broadcast on NBC Sports Boston. Fans looking to watch this NBA game can do so for free by using DirecTV Stream, which offers a free trial. You can also watch on FuboTV, which also offers a free trial and $30 off your first month, or SlingTV, which doesn’t offer a free trial but has promotional offers available.
The Celtics are looking for their first winning streak since they beat the Raptors, Timberwolves and Rockets consecutively to end December and start January. Boston enters this matchup at 28-11 while Toronto is 9-31 and winless in two previous matchups with the defending champions.
- WATCH THE GAME FOR FREE HERE
Who: Boston Celtics vs. Toronto Raptors
When: Wednesday, Jan. 15 at 7:30 p.m. EST
Where: Scotiabank Arena in Toronto
Stream: FuboTV; Sling; DirecTV Stream (free trial)
Betting: Check out our MA sports betting guide, where you can learn basic terminology, definitions and how to read odds for those interested in learning how to bet in Massachusetts.
What is FuboTV?
FuboTV is an internet television service that offers more than 200 channels across sports and entertainment including Paramount+ with SHOWTIME. From the UEFA Champions League to the WNBA to international tournaments ranging across sports, there’s plenty of options available on FuboTV, which offers a free trial and $30 off the first month for new customers.
What is DirecTV Stream?
DirecTV Stream offers practically everything DirecTV provides, except for a remote and a streaming device to connect to your television. Sign up now and get three free months of premium channels including MAX, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME and Starz.
What is SlingTV?
SlingTV offers a variety of live programing ranging from news and sports and starting as low as $20 a month for your first month. Subscribers also get a month of DVR Plus free if they sign up now. Choose from a variety of sports packages without long-term contracts and with easy cancelation.
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Court papers say ex-NBA player Jontay Porter laid out betting scheme in a text; 6th person arrested
By JENNIFER PELTZ Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — A sixth person was charged Monday in the federal sports betting case involving ex-NBA player Jontay Porter, and authorities disclosed a text message Porter allegedly sent explaining how to cash in on his plans to bench himself in a January 2024 game.
The former Toronto Raptors center already has pleaded guilty in the criminal case and was banned from the NBA for life. He admitted that he agreed to withdraw early from games, claiming illness or injury, so that those in the know could win big by betting on him to underperform expectations.
Although the new developments don’t affect the legal case against Porter, they put the scheme in what a court document says were his own words.
“Hit unders for the big numbers,” Porter wrote to an alleged conspirator on Jan. 26, 2024, according to a court complaint against yet another alleged schemer, Shane Hennen. He was arrested Sunday at the Las Vegas airport while boarding a flight to Panama.
“No blocks no steals. I’m going to play first 2-3 minute stint off the bench then when I get subbed out tell them my eye killing me again,” Porter wrote, according to the complaint. It identifies him only as “NBA Player 1” but makes clear through references — such as the details of his guilty plea last year — that it’s Porter.
He had scratched an eye during a game on Jan. 22, 2024, keeping conspirators in the loop by text even from the arena, according to the complaint. But he wasn’t on the injured list when the Raptors faced the LA Clippers four days later.
Porter ultimately played about 4 1/2 minutes in that game before saying he had aggravated the eye problem. Then he pulled out of a March 20 game against the Sacramento Kings after less than three minutes, saying he felt ill. His performance in both games fell well below what sportsbooks had anticipated.
Porter told a court in July that he got involved in the plot to try to clear his own gambling debts. He’s set to be sentenced in May. He could face anything from no jail time to 20 years behind bars; prosecutors have estimated his sentence at about 3 1/2 to four years in prison.
A message was sent to his lawyer Monday to seek comment on the developments.
Hennen was released without bail after his arraignment Monday in Las Vegas on charges including wire fraud conspiracy. The court complaint alleges that he placed bets through proxies after co-conspirators alerted him to Porter’s plans for the Jan. 26 game, and that he also got a heads-up about the March 20 game and likely told other gamblers about it.
A message seeking comment was sent to his attorney.
Besides Hennen and Porter, four other people also have been charged to date. Two have pleaded guilty, a third has pleaded not guilty, and the fourth hasn’t entered a plea.
The complaint against Hennen alleges there were still more conspirators involved. It’s unclear whether more people may yet be arrested.
The Associated Press contributed to this article
Boston, MA
Constantine Manos, photographer for landmark ‘Where’s Boston?’ exhibit, dies at 90 – The Boston Globe
Among Mr. Manos’s books were “A Greek Portfolio” (1972; updated 1999), “Bostonians” (1975), “American Color” 1995) and ”American Color 2″ (2010). Mr. Manos’s work with color was notably expressive and influential.
“Color was a four-letter word in art photography,” the photographer Lou Jones, who worked with Mr. Manos on “Where’s Boston?,” said in a telephone interview. “But he was making wonderful, complex photographs with color, and that meant so much.”
Yet for all his formal skill, Mr. Manos always emphasized the human element in his work. “I am a people photographer and have always been interested in people,” he once said.
That interest extended beyond the photographs he took. He was a celebrated teacher. Among the students he taught in his photo workshops was Stella Johnson.
“He’d go through a hundred of my photographs,” she said in a telephone interview, “and maybe he’d like two. ‘No, no, no, no, yes, no.’ Costa really taught me how to see. I remember him looking at one picture and saying, “You were standing in the wrong spot.’ Something like that was invaluable to me as a young photographer.
“He was a very, very kind man, very generous. But he was very strict. ‘How could you do that?’ He was adored by his students and by his friends, absolutely. We were all lucky to have been in his orbit.”
Mr. Manos, who moved to Provincetown in 2008, lived in the South End for four decades. The South Carolina native’s association with the Boston area began when the Boston Symphony Orchestra hired him as a photographer at Tanglewood. He was 19. This led to Mr. Manos’s first book, “Portrait of a Symphony” (1961; updated 2000).
Constantine Manos was born in Columbia, S.C., on Oct. 12, 1934. His parents, Dimitri and Aphrodite (Vaporiotou) Manos, were Greek immigrants. They ran a café in the city’s Black section. That experience gave Mr. Manos a sympathy for marginalized people that would stay with him throughout his life. As a student at the University of South Carolina, he wrote editorials in the school paper opposing segregation. Later, he would do extensive work chronicling the LGBTQ+ community with his camera.
Mr. Manos became interested in photography at 13, joining the school camera club and building a darkroom in his parents’ basement. After graduating from college, Mr. Manos did two years of Army service in Germany, working as a photographer for Stars and Stripes. He joined Magnum in 1963. This had special meaning for him. Mr. Manos’s chief inspiration as a young photographer had been Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of Magnum’s founders. He was such an admirer he made a point of using the same equipment that Cartier-Bresson did.
That same year, Mr. Manos entered a seafood restaurant in Rome that was around the corner from the Pantheon. Prodanou, his future husband, was dining with friends. Noticing Mr. Manos, he gestured to him. “Would you join us for coffee?” The couple spent the next 61 years together, marrying in 2011.
Mr. Manos lived in Greece for three years, which led to “A Greek Portfolio.” He undertook a very different project in the Athens of America. Part of the city’s Bicentennial tribute, “Where’s Boston?” was a slice-of-many-lives view of contemporary Boston.
Located in a red-white-and-blue striped pavilion at the Prudential Center, it became a local sensation. The installation involved 42 computerized projectors and 3,097 color slides (most of them taken by Mr. Manos), shown on eight 10 feet by 10 feet screens. Outside the pavilion was a set of murals, consisting of 152 black-and-white photographs of Boston scenes, all shot by Mr. Manos.
“The most important thing I had to do was to keep my picture ideas simple,” he said in a 1975 Globe interview. “Viewers are treated to a veritable avalanche of color slides in exactly one hour’s time.”
In that same interview, he made an observation about his work generally. “I prefer to stay in close to my subjects. I let them see me and my camera and when they become bored they forget about me and then I get my best pictures.”
Among institutions that own Mr. Manos’s photographs are the Museum of Fine Arts; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta; the Library of Congress; and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
In addition to his husband, Mr. Manos leaves a sister, Irene Constantinides, of Atlanta, and a brother, Theofanis Manos, of Greenville, S.C.
A memorial service will be held later this year.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mark.feeney@globe.com.
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