Where abolition blazed

BOSTON - Step into the sanctuary of the African Meeting House and you will walk on the same floorboards where Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and other prominent abolitionists railed against slavery in the 19th century, and where free black men gathered to shape the famed 54th Massachusetts Regiment to fight in the Civil War.

Following a painstaking $9 million restoration, the nation's oldest black church building reopened in December. Beverly Morgan-Welch, who spent more than a decade spearheading the project, calls the three-story brick building the nation's most important African American historic landmark.

"This space has the echo of so many of the greats of their time . . . who were trying to figure out a way to end slavery," said Morgan-Welch, executive director of the Museum of African American History.

Built in 1806 at a cost of $7,700, the meetinghouse sits on a quiet side street in Boston's upscale Beacon Hill neighborhood, in the shadow of the Massachusetts Statehouse and nestled among handsome brownstones and exclusive private residences.

Long before modern office towers would hold sway, the building could be seen from the city's bustling waterfront, a "beacon on a hill" for black people longing for freedom, Morgan-Welch said.

It was one among a series of firsts for Boston's vibrant black community, which by that time had already formed the young nation's first black Masonic order, an African Benevolent Society, and the African School. Though designed as a place for worship, education, social gatherings, and cultural events - The Marriage of Figaro was once performed there - it secured a place in history by becoming a headquarters of sorts for the antislavery movement.

"They prayed, they sang, they had songs like 'I'm an abolitionist' put to the words of 'Auld Lang Syne,' " said Morgan-Welch, who described congregants as coming from every walk of life, including business owners, craftsmen, servants, and seafarers.

Garrison formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society in the basement of the building in 1832.

"We have met to-night in this obscure school-house; our numbers are few and our influence limited; but, mark my prediction, Faneuil Hall shall ere long echo with the principles we have set forth. We shall shake the nation by their mighty power," Garrison said, according to the historical record. The words are among those inscribed on a granite plaque outside the building.