All right. I am in Beacon Hill.

Very bougie.

Whole Foods, Starbucks, people walking their dog.

A lot of people walking their dog, actually.

Beacon Hill is a very quaint neighborhood in Boston.

Gas lamps, cobblestone roads, and a lot of old red brick buildings.

The neighborhood is split into two sides.

The north slope and the south slope.

The south slope has pretty much always been upscale like this.

But the North Slope, that's another story.

Back in the 1800s, the North Slope of Beacon Hill was home to a community of a couple thousand

free black people.

This community was surrounding a small

dead-end street called Smith Court. Smith Court isn't huge. It's made up of one block, and there's

only a few buildings. There's a boarding house, a school, and the African meeting house, which

used to be a Baptist church. This small street and this neighborhood have a lot of revolutionary

history.

But don't just take it from me.

Here's a little story.

Are you familiar with the story of William and Ellen Craft?

This is Sean Quigley.

He is a National Park Ranger and a storyteller.

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