Black Heritage Trail map (click to enlarge)

The main activity at Boston African American National Historic Site is a walking tour of the North Slope of Beacon Hill neighborhood on what is officially known as the Black Heritage Trail. The 1.3-mile route traverses hilly terrain and has terminuses at the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial on the northeast corner of Boston Common and at the Abiel Smith School on Joy Street. The National Park Service claims the trail is 1.6 miles long, but that may be if you walk a complete loop back to your starting point.

A brochure that gives a brief description of the points of interest along the Black Heritage Trail is available inside the Abiel Smith School. This is the last stop on the tour, so if you are there, might as well do the trail in reverse—it makes no difference. If you have a cell phone and access to the Internet, the National Park Service provides a Virtual Black Heritage Trail Tour audio program. On your own, this is all the information you will get. Most of the buildings of importance aren’t even marked with a sign or commemorative plaque, so in some cases you won’t even know what to look for. Thus, a walk on your own is a complete waste of time—you might as well wander aimlessly around Boston.

To get anything out of a walk along the Black Heritage Trail other than exercise, you must join a 1.5-hour Ranger-guided tour. These are typically held from Memorial Day until the end of October on Wednesdays through Sundays at 10 AM and 1 PM. There is no charge, but you do need to register in advance at Eventbrite. Tours meet at the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial next to Boston Common. Large groups must call (617) 742-5415 to make a reservation. Times can always change, so for the current schedule, see either the official National Park Service’s Things to Do, Operating Hours and Seasons, or Calendar web page for Boston African American National Historic Site.

Today the entire Beacon Hill area is a very expensive residential neighborhood and predominately white. However, from the time when slavery in Massachusetts officially ended in 1790 up through the end of the 1800s, the northern slope between Pinckney and Cambridge streets was dominated by black residents. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that blacks began to move out of the neighborhood and relocate to Boston’s South End and Roxbury, and by the 1930s the North Slope of Beacon Hill was mainly occupied by Eastern European immigrants.

The Ranger-guided tour covers most, but not all of the Black Heritage Trail, and the discussion centers on the Civil War-era history of Boston. Most of the points of interest along the trail are homes of abolitionists and community leaders from this time. However, the tour is more than just a stop in front of a house and a spiel about who once lived inside. The Ranger presents a much broader picture of slavery, the abolition movement, and the lives of black residents of Boston during and after the Civil War.

See the following web pages for information about each stop on the Black Heritage Trail. At the bottom of each page is a menu that you can use to get to the next or previous tour stop.

Stop 1: Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry

Stop 2:  George Middleton House

Stop 3:  Phillips School

Stop 4:  John J. Smith House

Stop 5:  Charles Street Meeting House

Stop 6:  Lewis and Harriet Hayden House

Stop 7:  John Coburn House

Stop 8:  Smith Court Residences

Stop 9:  Abiel Smith School

Stop 10:  African Meeting House

After taking the Ranger-guided tour of the Black Heritage Trail, I walked the route on my own to get an idea of how long a self-guided tour would take. I spent about 45 minutes, so figure no more than an hour. However, as I said before, other than exercise, this is an hour of time wasted. Take the guided tour.

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