August 5, 2008

August 5, 2008

It is back to Boston again for another round of history. This time we start with a guided ranger walk of the Boston African American National Historic Site. It starts at the Shaw Memorial on the Boston Commons. Aimee and I recognize this sculpture. We saw a copy of this Augustus Saint-Gaudens masterpiece last week at the artist’s summer studio in Cornish, NH. (If you see enough historic sites, eventually they start to interact!) The Boston African American National Historic Site is about the free black community that lived on Beacon Hill here and their “social revolution” movement. Appropriately the Shaw Memorial is devoted to the Massachusetts 54th, the first black regiment of the Civil War. Their exploits were the basis of the movie “Glory” with Denzel Washinton and Matthew Broderick. From the Memorial we walk up through now trendy Beacon Hill (passing John Kerry’s house). From the efforts of the free blacks that used to live here, Massachusetts became the first state to prohibit slavery in 1789 (peacefully via the courts). They also were instrumental in pioneering the abolitionist movement and school desegregation.

In the afternoon we take the subway to the south suburb of Quincy to visit the Adams National Historic Park. At the minimal Visitor Center we sign up for a trolley tour of the local birthplaces of John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, the 2nd and 6th presidents of the US. We also tour John Adams’ adult home. All three are yawners except for the stand-alone one-room library of John Quincy Adams. Besides being beautiful, it was the first-ever Presidential Library. The best part of the tour, unfortunately, was the PBS movie “John Adams” that we watched in the Visitor Center while waiting for our tour to start. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had a long-standing feud that ended only when they both reached old age. Amazingly, both of these early Patriots died on the same day, July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after they both signed the Declaration of Independence.