The National Parks of Boston

What drew Binh Hoffman to volunteer for Boston National Historic Park—and what keeps him engaged—is the opportunity to connect people with the stories of the past.

The Declaration of the Causes and of the Necessity of Taking up Arms

Boston merchant and abolitionist Edmund Jackson served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Clergyman and merchant Eliphalet W. Jackson participated in the abolition and temperance movements and served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

Active in Boston’s abolitionist organizations, John P. Jewett greatly contributed to the movement as a publisher, printing many antislavery works—most famously, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 

Boston paper hanger Thomas Hunter served on the 1850 Boston Vigilance Committee.

USS HARTFORD, a sloop-of-war ship, most notably served as Admiral Farragut's flagship during the American Civil War.

An affluent landowner, William Jenkins provided shelter to freedom seekers heading north on the Underground Railroad on his estate north of Boston in Andover, Massachusetts.

In 1842, freedom seekers George and Rebecca Latimer arrived in Boston after escaping slavery in Virginia. Though Bostonians quickly secured George’s freedom, the Latimer case provided antislavery activists the political capital to usher in a statewide Personal Liberty Law, known as the "Latimer Law." Though largely remembered for the law that bears their name, the Latimers’ story also provides a powerful lesson of family resilience, community protest, and social change.

The struggle for equal education in Boston began in the late 1780s and continued through the 1970s when turbulent protests engulfed the city. Historic sites that now comprise the National Parks of Boston served as the setting for several of the movement's most contentious moments.