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 formerly enslaved people. [2] [3] Located on Seventh Street, abolitionists Nathan and Mary Johnson lived among their business partners and other anti-slavery advocates. [4] Formerly enslaved people, Lewis Temple and Frederick Douglass, lived in Abolition Row. [2] Although Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, federal laws like the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 allowed enslavers to capture and re-enslave those that escaped bondage. New Bedford, however, had a network of abolitionists who worked to prevent peoples' re-enslavement. [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. They were influential 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 the Community Preservation Act of New Bedford for $125,000 and other grants from the 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. He became the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
New Bedford is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast region. Up through the 17th century, the area was the territory of the Wampanoag Native American people. English colonists bought the land on which New Bedford would later be built from the Wampanoag in 1652, and the original colonial settlement that would later become the city was founded by English Quakers in the late 17th century. The town of New Bedford itself was officially incorporated in 1787.
William Lloyd Garrison was an American abolitionist, journalist, and social reformer. He is best known for his widely read anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which Garrison founded in 1831 and published in Boston until slavery in the United States was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
The American Anti-Slavery Society was an abolitionist society founded by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, had become a prominent abolitionist and was a key leader of this society, who often spoke at its meetings. William Wells Brown, also a freedman, also often spoke at meetings. By 1838, the society had 1,350 local chapters with around 250,000 members.
The Liberator (1831–1865) was a weekly abolitionist newspaper, printed and published in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison and, through 1839, by Isaac Knapp. Religious rather than political, it appealed to the moral conscience of its readers, urging them to demand immediate freeing of the slaves ("immediatism"). It also promoted women's rights, an issue that split the American abolitionist movement. Despite its modest circulation of 3,000, it had prominent and influential readers, including all the abolitionist leaders, among them Frederick Douglass, Beriah Green, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Alfred Niger. It frequently printed or reprinted letters, reports, sermons, and news stories relating to American slavery, becoming a sort of community bulletin board for the new abolitionist movement that Garrison helped foster.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave is an 1845 memoir and treatise on abolition written by African-American orator and former slave Frederick Douglass during his time in Lynn, Massachusetts. It is the first of Douglass's three autobiographies, the others being My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.
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. Frederick 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 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.
The Liberty Party was an abolitionist political party in the United States before the American Civil War. The party experienced its greatest activity during the 1840s, while remnants persisted as late as 1860. It supported James G. Birney in the presidential elections of 1840 and 1844. Others who attained prominence as leaders of the Liberty Party included Gerrit Smith, Salmon P. Chase, Henry Highland Garnet, Henry Bibb, and William Goodell. They attempted to work within the federal system created by the United States Constitution to diminish the political influence of the Slave Power and advance the cause of universal emancipation and an integrated, egalitarian society.
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.
In the United States, abolitionism, the movement that sought to end slavery in the country, was active from the colonial era until the American Civil War, the end of which brought about the abolition of American slavery, except as punishment for a crime, through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Rodney French (1802-1882) was an American abolitionist, politician, and merchant who served as Mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" was a speech delivered by Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852, at Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York, at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. In the address, Douglass states that positive statements about perceived American values, such as liberty, citizenship, and freedom, were an offense to the enslaved population of the United States because they lacked those rights. Douglass referred not only to the captivity of enslaved people, but to the merciless exploitation and the cruelty and torture that slaves were subjected to in the United States.
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.
Martha Bailey Briggs was an American educator who was born and educated in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she taught formerly enslaved men and women to read and write. In 1869, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught and served as a principal at Anthony Bowen Elementary School until 1873, when she began work at Howard University. At Howard, she trained teachers and taught math. In 1879, she was hired to serve as principal of the Miner Normal School. She stepped down from Miner Normal in 1883 and returned to Howard, where she served as principal of the Howard Normal Department until her death in 1889.
Amelia Piper 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.
41°37′59.16″N70°55′41.7″W / 41.6331000°N 70.928250°W
