African Meeting House

Built in 1806 in the heart of what was then Boston's biggest free black neighborhood, this National Historic Landmark was the site of several Abolitionist Movement events that changed this nation forever, including the founding of the New England Anti-Slavery Society by William Lloyd Garrison in 1832, an 1860 speech by Frederick Douglass and the 1863 recruitment to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw. It is the oldest original black church still standing in the United States.