Boston’s “cradle of liberty” was paid for with slavery profits

TO MANY AMERICANS, Faneuil Hall is sacred ground. Built in 1742 as a market place and meeting hall, it became the centre of Boston’s civic life. In the years leading to the American revolution, town-hall meetings became debates on the Sugar Tax of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765 and taxing tea. It was where Bostonians like Samuel Adams voiced dissent against what they saw as oppressive British policies. Later it became a forum where anti-slavery advocates held rallies and organised against fugitive-slave laws. Abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, who had escaped from slavery, gave impassioned speeches. Suffragists also used Faneuil Hall to rally support for political and social rights for women.But the building known as the “cradle of liberty”, like much of American history, is scarred by slavery. Its construction was funded by, and named after, Peter Faneuil, a wealthy merchant who owned slaves and profited from the slave trade, including partially financing ships that went to Africa. Last month Boston’s city council passed a resolution asking the city to give Faneuil Hall a nobler name, such as “Liberty Hall”, or perhaps rename it after Douglass or Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and indigenous ancestry, who was killed by British soldiers in the Boston massacre. The resolution is toothless, because only the city’s public-facilities commission can rename buildings owned by the city. But it is symbolically important.