Boston before the Civil War was in the process of a huge physical transformation – from a small colonial seaport, criss-crossed by winding cow paths, into a bustling city with a rapidly growing population. 

That population was diverse: from Black freedom-seekers who had escaped slavery in the South to rich White merchants and slave traders of Puritan stock; from hardscrabble New England farmers fallen on hard times to Irish immigrants who had fled the potato famine in their homeland; from house servants to itinerant sailors to Revolutionary War veterans.   

But in this complex and ever-changing environment, there was one glaring constant: racial hostility and discrimination towards Black residents that hampered their ability to progress economically and politically. For many Black workers, despite their resilience and creativity, finding and keeping a job was a near-daily challenge. 

Black men could not secure apprenticeships, even in the shipbuilding and construction trades their fathers and grandfathers had followed. White shop owners and manufacturers refused to hire Black workers out of deference to the prejudices of their White employees or because of their own racism. It was the same story on the docks: of the nearly 50 wharves jutting out into Boston Harbor, only one employed Black stevedores. 

Moreover, competition was fierce for the jobs that were available, especially from Irish immigrants. And the surplus of willing workers depressed wages for all laborers in the city. According to historian Jacqueline Jones, author of Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era, most Black Bostonians “had to cobble together a living, hunting for day jobs subject to the vagaries of the weather and the needs of individual employers.”

The cruel irony of a city known for militant anti-slavery activism failing to ensure a fair shake for its Black residents, including many who had themselves fled bondage, was not lost on local Black abolitionists like John Swett Rock. An attorney, doctor, and dentist, Rock took his White abolitionist allies to task for their indifference to the economically struggling Black community in their midst. “That is the idea – colored men have no right to earn an honest living – they must be starved out.” He implied that by denying Black people a decent livelihood, Whites hoped to spur a mass exodus of African Americans from the city.  

Historically, African Americans have lived in all parts of Boston. In the 1800s, they were primarily concentrated in three neighborhoods: the area now occupied by Massachusetts General Hospital; the area near the wharves of the North End, where they were attracted by the possibility of work in the shipping industries; and on the North Slope of Beacon Hill in the shadow of the Massachusetts State House.

Black people lived on the North Slope as early as the late 1700s. The first recorded African American landowner in Boston was Zipporah Potter Atkins, daughter of enslaved house servants who, having been born in Massachusetts, had the status of a free person under state law. Atkins’ purchase of a timber-framed house in the city’s North End in 1670 was not only a milestone but an extraordinary achievement: As a woman of African descent, she was considered by Puritans to be at the lowest level of a rigidly structured society.  

By 1830, a third of the city’s 1,900 Black residents – who comprised just over 3% of the total population – called the North Slope home; by 1860, it was two-thirds. Just a few blocks away, at the top of the hill, were the fashionable homes of White wealthy industrialists, many of whom amassed their fortunes manufacturing textiles in Massachusetts from cotton grown and harvested by enslaved people in the South.

North Slope residents made their living in a variety of ways. Racist exclusion restricted many to service occupations such as domestic workers, day laborers, seamen, boot blacks, launderers, porters, waiters, and chimney sweeps. Some residents were skilled craftspeople or owned shops and independent businesses that were located in the neighborhood or elsewhere in the city. They included clothing dealers, hairdressers, tailors, printers, musicians, carpenters, shoemakers, and grocers. A few were professionals – doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. 

A number of North Slope residents worked in Boston’s burgeoning publishing industry. Some of the city’s foremost publishers and booksellers, many of who produced and sold abolitionist literature, were clustered downtown in the Cornhill area, in and around what is now City Hall Plaza. Among them was the White abolitionist Isaac Knapp whose catalog included the autobiographies of formerly enslaved people, such as Olaudah Equiano, an influential activist in the British abolitionist movement.

Knapp was also co-publisher with another White abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, of the anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, and of the writings of Black abolitionists, including Maria Stewart, the pioneering female abolitionist and women’s rights champion. Beginning in 1834, The Liberator office was located at 25 Cornhill. The building also housed the New England Anti-Slavery Society and was a vital link in the Underground Railroad (UGRR): The basement harbored many formerly enslaved people who had escaped from bondage in the South. 

Another UGRR supporter, merchant J. J. Jewett, published the first American version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at his Cornhill business. The anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe sold 3,000 copies on its first day of publication in 1852, and 300,000 during its first year.   

The North Slope community was anchored by churches, including what became known as the African Meeting House – the oldest Black church edifice still standing in the U.S. – and a range of community-based organizations that provided services, protested discrimination, promoted music and the arts, and advocated for social and political change. Among these were the Massachusetts General Colored Association, the Boston Afric-American Female Intelligence Society, and the Adelphic Union Library Association.

Like other Black Bostonians of the period, few residents of the North Slope were homeowners. Records show that in 1850 only 1.5 percent of Black single adults or family heads in the city owned real estate. Most Boston families, regardless of race, lived in boarding houses, took in boarders, or rented rooms in other people’s homes. Boarding houses – most of them racially segregated – were typically run by women, providing another way for them to make a living. (Beacon Hill likely had the largest concentration of Black women-operated boarding houses in the city.) In their book, Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North, historians James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton write: "Boarding provided an important means for new arrivals to be acclimated to city life in Boston. Through their hosts, boarders could be introduced to employment opportunities, social groups, the church, and friends."  

This kind of collaborative culture was a hallmark of the Black community. It contributed to the power and effectiveness of community activism when it came to the battle against slavery in the South and for civil and political rights in Massachusetts.  

The rich tapestry of the historic North Slope community has been uncovered by BHS members through their own explorations. But it is also evident from other research, including a 2002 study of the people and places of the North Slope and their historical significance by the National Park Service’s Boston African American National Historic Site. The report credits BHS member Michael Terranova, who lived on the North Slope for many years and shared his own extensive research of its history, with playing a critical advisory role in the study.