About us

In the decades before the Civil War (1861-1865), Boston, Massachusetts was the center of the national movement against slavery in the U.S. African Americans, free and enslaved, played a pivotal but relatively unrecognized leadership role in that movement. 

In Boston, many key leaders and activists lived on the North Slope of Beacon Hill where African Americans created a vibrant and resilient community that was a driving force for abolitionism and civil rights. Residents were also active in the Underground Railroad, the network of activists, secret routes, and safe houses that helped enslaved African Americans escape to the free states and to Canada, where slavery was abolished in 1834. 

Beacon Hill Scholars (BHS) celebrates and raises awareness of these early racial justice heroes. We’re a diverse group of volunteers with a shared enthusiasm for researching, interpreting, and preserving the rich history of the North Slope community and what it has to teach us all about the ongoing struggles for justice today. We find inspiration in the example of the many courageous members of that community on whose shoulders we stand.

We’re not “scholars” in the conventional academic sense; we adopted the name “Beacon Hill Scholars” in reference to the Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill – the oldest public school for African Americans in the U.S. – where pupils were not called students but “scholars.”

Photo: The African Baptist Church at Smith Court on Belknap Street in Boston in about 1892. The location was the birthplace of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Source: William Lloyd Garrison's The Story of His Life, Volume I, Part II, by Wendell Phillips Garrison. From the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.