Massachusetts: The Robbins House

544-square-foot single story home. The outside interior of the home is yellow; 4 windows at front.

The Robbins House, Inc. a 501c3

Quick Facts

Location:

Concord, Massachusetts

MANAGED BY:

The Robbins House, Inc. a 501c3

The Robbins House was the childhood home of early Civil Rights activist Ellen Robbins Garrison. Ellen, the daughter and granddaughter of men who had been enslaved, spent her life educating newly freed people and fighting for their civil rights.

Born and raised in this house, Ellen’s activism began in Concord. Early on, she learned about racial discrimination, and followed in her mother’s footsteps as an antislavery activist. At 12, she marched in a Concord parade hand-in-hand with her white schoolmate “beneath the gaze of curiosity, surprise, ridicule and admiration.”

Ellen signed many petitions as a way to make her voice heard. In 1866, Ellen tested the nation’s first Civil Rights Act in court. Almost a century before Rosa Parks took her seat on an Alabama bus, Ellen sat in a segregated waiting room in a Baltimore train station and was “forcibly ejected.” Ellen felt it was her duty to test the new law.

“I feel as though I ought to strive to maintain my rights… it will be a stand for others….”