News Release

BOAF Goes to Harvard

Date: December 12, 2012

As part of this upcoming year's celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, BOAF Park Ranger Ryan McNabb is co-leading a class at Harvard University with Professor John Stauffer, a longtime friend and supporter of BOAF.

The course will culminate with a student-curated exhibition at Harvard's Houghton Library. Ranger McNabb, Professor Stauffer, and six Harvard students have been working closely with Houghton staff member Peter X. Accardo, conducting primary source research of original manuscript material housed at the library. They have identified compelling objects to include in the exhibition that will highlight different people and events associated with emancipation. Themes of the exhibition include the Haitian Revolution, female abolitionists, mid-19th century political compromises and crises, creative responses to the theme of emancipation, songs and hymns, Boston-Cambridge-Concord abolitionist communities, as well as the role of black Bostonians during the Abolitionist Era.

Artifacts uncovered that directly relate to BOAF include a letter from Frederick Douglass to Charles Sumner discussing the 54th Massachusetts regiment as well as a letter indicating abolitionist Lewis Hayden's belief that he shot and killed a guard in the unsuccessful courthouse rescue of Anthony Burns. Coinciding with the Freedom Rising symposium, this special exhibition is set to open in May and will run throughout the summer.