Economic Opportunity and Community Building at Boston’s African Meeting House

Summary

The African Meeting House in Boston became a center of the city’s free black community during the nineteenth century. Archaeological excavations at this site recovered material from the Meeting House backlot and a neighboring apartment building occupied by black tenants. These artifacts reveal strategies the community used to negotiate a place for themselves, create economic opportunities, and build community institutions. The Meeting House helped foster community success and became a powerful center for African American action on abolition, educational equality, and military integration. This paper emphasizes how archaeological and historical evidence from the African Meeting House demonstrates the power of the actions of individuals in the black community.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• ‘Black Yankees’ and the African Diaspora: Contemporary Perspectives on the Archaeology of African Americans in New England

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-37,04