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Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley Peters, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly was the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America, where she was bought by the Wheatley family of Boston.

54th Infantry Buffalo Soldiers

The institution of slavery was a disease deeply embedded in the tissue of the newly formed American republic. It proved beyond the sagacity of the Founding Fathers to cure, and left undisturbed it festered, ready to prove fatal to the Union.

In Massachusetts, slavery was abolished not through legislative fiat, but by judicial action in the 1780s. On the national stage, slavery survived, to be destroyed only after a long and bloody civil war. While causes for the Civil War – political, economic and cultural – were varied, the essence of the fight, especially for Massachusetts, was always about slavery and the defense of human dignity and freedom. The call to this fight went out and was answered. In the press and on the streets, from the pulpit, lecture podium, and eventually the battlefield, blacks in the Commonwealth stepped forward and helped change the course of history.

Melnea Agnes Cass

Melnea Agnes Cass (née Jones; June 16, 1896 – December 16, 1978) was an American community and civil rights activist. She was deeply involved in many community projects and volunteer groups in the South End and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston and helped found the Boston local of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. She was active in the fight to desegregate Boston public schools, as a board member and as president of the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As a young woman, Cass also assisted women with voter registration after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. She was affectionately known as the "First Lady of Roxbury."

Malcolm X—Ella Little-Collins House

The Malcolm X—Ella Little-Collins House is a historic house at 72 Dale street in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts. Built in 1874, it was for many years home to Ella Little-Collins, a prominent local civil rights activist, and was home to her younger brother Malcolm X during his later teenage years. During this period Malcolm X was exposed to Islam, beginning his path to involvement in the Nation of Islam. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021, at which time it was still owned by the Collins family.

First Church of Roxbury

National Center of Afro-American Artists Museum

Abbotsford, now the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, is a historic house at 300 Walnut Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Hibernian Hall

The Hibernian Hall is a historic building at 182-186 Dudley Street in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. The four story brick building was designed by Edward Thomas Patrick Graham, and built in 1913 for the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish Catholic fraternal organization.

African Meeting House

The African Meeting House, also known variously as First African Baptist Church, First Independent Baptist Church and the Belknap Street Church, was built in 1806 and is now the oldest black church edifice still standing in the United States.