[On March
5th, 1770, the events of the Boston Massacre unfolded on King’s
Street. On March 5th, 2020, the Northeast MLA convention
will begin in Boston. So for both the Massacre’s 250th anniversary
and that ongoing convention, this week I’ll highlight some historic sites and
collective memories in Boston!]
On one thing I
love about the historic path, one I don’t, and how we can move forward.
As I wrote in this
long-ago post, one of my favorite things about Rome, the only European city
in which I’ve gotten to spend extended time, was how much its history and its
contemporary (as of my 2002 visit, anyway) coexisted, how fully the historic
spaces and sites felt part of the city’s life and identity in the early 21st
century. Too often, American cities segregate the histories, treat them as
separate sections to be visited by tourists or school field trips (and, implicitly,
forgotten or ignored the rest of the time). One happy exception to that trend,
however, is Boston’s Freedom Trail,
a painted red line on the city’s sidewalks that leads walkers to many different
historic and cultural sites and landmarks, all while winding its way through
the city’s very current and busy downtown districts. I’m sure Trail walkers
routinely bump up against frustrated businesspeople hurrying to their next
appointment, but that’s precisely what I love so much about this way of leading
us through history—it reminds us that our present communities are literally and
figuratively built upon those pasts, and forces our experience of the past to
butt up against the realities of the present.
So I really do
like the way the Freedom Trail presents Boston histories—but at the same time,
it’s important to note that presenting them in that linked and guided way makes
it that much more likely that visitors might not find or experience sites that
are not included on the Trail. There’s no way everything could be included, of
course—especially not sites that are beyond walking distance away from the
current Trail’s location—but some exclusions nonetheless feel frustratingly
arbitrary and damaging. Without doubt the most frustrating exclusion is of the
parallel trail on which I will focus tomorrow’s post: the Black Heritage
Trail. This Beacon Hill neighborhood walk past various historic sites and
landmarks (about which, again, more tomorrow!) literally abuts the start of the
Freedom Trail, near the Boston State House and the Shaw
Memorial, and as a result it would seem particularly straightforward to extend
the Freedom Trail’s red line to include the Black Heritage Trail. But unless
things have changed in the few months since I was last in that area of the city,
the Black Heritage Trail is not in any way linked to the Freedom Trail—not with
the red line, and not in any other obvious way that would lead those visitors
walking the Freedom Trail to add this profoundly parallel path into their
excursion.
How do we
challenge that frustrating exclusion (one which, to be clear, I think is due much
more to timing than racism; the Freedom Trail had existed for decades by the
time the Black Heritage Trail was created)? One important way is to highlight
the Black Heritage Trail as frequently and widely as possible (as I’ll do in
tomorrow’s post); I can’t tell you how many Bostonians I’ve encountered who
simply don’t know of its existence, and that, at least, is a very addressable problem!
But at the same time, the separation of the Black Heritage Trail from the
Freedom Trail is a distinct and telling problem of its own, and one that can’t
be fixed simply with more awareness. For that, it seems to me, we need to
literally change (or rather extend) the Freedom Trail, bringing its lines and
its guidance to the Black Heritage Trail as well. I’ve reached out to the Freedom
Trail folks through their email
and phone number to make that case, and if you read this and are able to do
the same, it couldn’t hurt! Thanks!
Next site
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other sites and collective memories (in Boston or anywhere else) you’d
highlight?
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