Abolition Row is a neighborhood in New Bedford, Massachusetts. A number of the families that founded the town of New Bedford lived on Sixth and Seventh Streets and were active members of the Abolition movement in New Bedford. They also represent the whaling industry employers who employed a diverse workforce. [1] It is located near the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. [2]
The one-square-mile neighborhood was the home to white and black abolitionists, including former slaves. [2] [3] Located on Seventh Street, abolitionists Nathan and Mary Johnson lived among their business partners and other anti-slavery advocates. [4] Former slaves, Lewis Temple and Frederick Douglass lived in Abolition Row. [2] Although slavery was abolished in 1783, there were laws (like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850) that allowed slaveholders to capture fugitive slaves and return them to slavery. New Bedford, however, had a network of abolitionists that no former slaves would be reclaimed. [2] The neighborhood's houses are of Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and early Italian architecture. [2]
There, in New Bedford, the black man's children—although anti-slavery was then far from popular—went to school side by side with the white children, and apparently without objection from any quarter. To make me at home, Mr. Johnson assured me that no slaveholder could take a slave from New Bedford; that there were men there who would lay down their lives, before such an outrage could be perpetrated. The colored people themselves were of the best metal, and would fight for liberty to the death. ... [they] are educated up to the point of fighting for their freedom, as well as speaking for it.
— Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) [4]
Abolition Row Park, developed by the New Bedford Historical Society, is located at Seventh and Spring Streets, [5] near downtown New Bedford. It is in the Seaport Cultural District, where the Friends Meeting House (1820) and Nathan and Polly Johnson properties (1810) are located. The Johnson House was an Underground Railroad station and the first residence of Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray-Douglass. Both buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places and are important for their importance during the days of the Underground Railroad and the anti-slavery movement in New Bedford. [4]
By late 2018, an archaeological dig was conducted at the site of the Abolition Row Park by the Plymouth Archaeological Rediscovery Project. [6]
In 2017, a ground-breaking was conducted for the park, which will have a statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a gazebo, a community garden, a border of Cherry trees, and markers about the historical significance of the Abolition Row area. [4] [5] In June 2019, the Mass Cultural Council (Cultural Facilities Fund) awarded The New Bedford Historical Society a grant of $180,000 to fund the memorial statue of Frederick Douglass and the development of the park. [7] This is in addition to a grant from Community Preservation Act of New Bedford for $125,000 and other grants from U.S. Conference of Mayors Foundation, the Demoulas Foundation, and the Island Foundation. The grants meet the funding needed by The New Bedford Historical Society and the City of New Bedford. Representative Antonio F.D. Cabral and Senator Mark Montigny provided support for the Abolition Row Project. [7] The park is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 2020. [8]
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Art Gallery held an exhibit from November 2018 through January 2019 of Abolition Row entitled "Black Spaces Matter: Celebrating New Bedford's Abolition Row". It included documentary films, virtual-reality tours of the neighborhood, historic photographs and maps, illustrations, and 3-D print models. [2]
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, during which he gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers' arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved people around the world.
Passmore Williamson was an American abolitionist and businessman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a free state in the antebellum years. As secretary of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society and a member of its Vigilance Committee, Williamson is best known for helping Jane Johnson and her two sons gain freedom from slavery on July 18, 1855.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass's third autobiography, published in 1881, revised in 1892. Because of the emancipation of American slaves during and following the American Civil War, Douglass gave more details about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery in this volume than he could in his two previous autobiographies. It is the only one of Douglass's autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln and Garfield, his account of the ill-fated "Freedman's Bank", and his service as the United States Marshall of the District of Columbia. Fredrick Douglass shed light on what life was like as an enslaved person. Although it is the least studied and analyzed, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass allows readers to view his life as a whole.
The Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society was established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1838. Founders included James Mott, Lucretia Mott, Robert Purvis, and John C. Bowers.
The Nathan and Mary (Polly) Johnson properties are a National Historic Landmark at 17–19 and 21 Seventh Street in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Originally the building consisted of two structures, one dating to the 1820s and an 1857 house joined with the older one shortly after construction. They have since been restored and now house the New Bedford Historical Society. The two properties are significant for their association with leading members of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts, and as the only surviving residence in New Bedford of Frederick Douglass. Nathan and Polly Johnson were free African-Americans who are known to have sheltered escaped slaves using the Underground Railroad from 1822 on. Both were also successful in local business; Nathan as a caterer and Polly as a confectioner.
William Parker was an American former slave who escaped from Maryland to Pennsylvania, where he became an abolitionist and anti-slavery activist in Christiana. He was a farmer and led a black self-defense organization. He was notable as a principal figure in the Christiana incident, 1851, also known as the Christiana Resistance. Edward Gorsuch, a Maryland slaveowner who owned four slaves who had fled over the state border to Parker's farm, was killed and other white men in the party to capture the fugitives were wounded. The events brought national attention to the challenges of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
Anna Murray Douglass was an American abolitionist, member of the Underground Railroad, and the first wife of American social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass, from 1838 to her death.
The Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society (PFASS) was founded in December 1833 and dissolved in March 1870 following the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. It was founded by eighteen women, including Mary Ann M'Clintock, Margaretta Forten, her mother Charlotte, and Forten's sisters Sarah and Harriet.
The Hovenden House, Barn and Abolition Hall is a group of historic buildings which are located in Plymouth Meeting, Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. In the decades prior to the American Civil War, this property served as an important station on the Underground Railroad. Abolition Hall was built to be a meeting place for abolitionists, and later was the studio of artist Thomas Hovenden.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the late colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Rodney French was an American abolitionist, politician, and merchant who served as Mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The Fugitive Slave Convention was held in Cazenovia, New York, on August 21 and 22, 1850. It was a fugitive slave meeting, the biggest ever held in the United States. Madison County, New York, was the abolition headquarters of the country, because of philanthropist and activist Gerrit Smith, who lived in neighboring Peterboro, New York, and called the meeting "in behalf of the New York State Vigilance Committee." Hostile newspaper reports refer to the meeting as "Gerrit Smith's Convention". Nearly fifty fugitives attended—the largest gathering of fugitive slaves in the nation's history.
Amelia Piper (1796–1856) was a former slave and abolitionist, who organized anti-slavery fairs, was a manager of the New Bedford Female Union Society, and was a fundraiser for the abolition of slavery. She and her husband were conductors on the Underground Railroad. She worked within the African-American community and the greater New Bedford, Massachusetts community to coordinate the efforts of others to provide lives of freedom to those who had been enslaved.
Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts, began with the opposition to slavery voiced by Quakers during the late 1820s, followed by African Americans forming the antislavery group New Bedford Union Society in 1833, and an integrated group of abolitionists forming the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society a year later. During the era New Bedford, Massachusetts, gained a reputation as a safe haven for fugitive slaves seeking freedom. Located on the East Coast of the United States, the town was becoming the "whaling capital of the world", where ships frequently returned to port, operated by crews of diverse backgrounds, languages, and ethnicity. This made it easy for fugitive slaves to "mix in" with crew members. The whaling and shipping industries were also uniquely open to people of color.
New Bedford Friends Meeting House, also known as New Bedford Friends Meeting, is a Quaker house of worship in New Bedford, Massachusetts. This meeting house has since 1822 been the home to the New Bedford Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); the meeting meets every Sunday at 10:00 a.m.
Nathan Johnson was an African-American abolitionist who sheltered fugitive slaves, most notably Frederick Douglass, and was a successful businessman in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He married Mary Durfee, nicknamed Polly, who was his business partner in their confectionery and catering businesses. In 1849, Nathan followed the Gold Rush to California. Polly died in 1871 and Nathan returned after her death and was a beneficiary of her estate.
Putnam Historic District, located in Zanesville, Ohio, was an important center of Underground Railroad traffic and it home to a number of abolitionists. The district, with private residences and other key buildings important in the fight against slavery, lies between the Pennsylvania Central Railroad, Van Buren Street, and Muskingum River. It became a historic district of the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
Although the United States Constitution did not use the words "slave" or "slavery", it dealt directly with American slavery in at least five provisions and indirectly protected the institution elsewhere in the document.
"The Constitution of the United States: is it pro-slavery or anti-slavery?" is a speech that Frederick Douglass gave on March 26, 1860, in Glasgow, in which he rejected arguments made by slaveholders as well as by fellow abolitionists as to the nature and meaning of the United States Constitution. The popularity of the speech led to its being published as a pamphlet.
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