Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: Frederick Douglass

Born into slavery in 1817 or 1818, Frederick Douglass became one of the most outspoken advocates of abolition and women’s rights in the 19th century. Believing that "Right is of no sex, truth is of no color," Douglass urged an immediate end to slavery and supported Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other women’s rights activists in their crusade for woman suffrage. Douglass joined the abolitionist movement in 1841 and put his considerable oratorical skills to work as a speaker for the American Anti-Slavery Society. By 1847 he had moved to Rochester, New York, where he published the North Star, a weekly abolitionist newspaper. Douglass was also active with the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and it was through this organization that he met Elizabeth M’Clintock. In July of 1848, M’Clintock invited Douglass to attend the First Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls. Douglass readily accepted, and his participation at the convention revealed his commitment to woman suffrage. He was the only African American to attend the convention.

The church was built between 1804 to 1807 to the designs by noted American architect Asher Benjamin for the Third Baptist Church. Before the Back Bay neighbourhood was reclaimed from the water, the church was located at the edge of the Charles River which it used for its baptisms. In the years before the American Civil War, it was a stronghold of the anti-slavery movement, and was the site of notable speeches from anti-slavery activists Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. The Meeting House is part of the Boston Black Heritage Trail. The Baptist congregation sold the structure to the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1876. The building served as a Universalist Church of America church from 1949 to 1961, then Unitarian Universalist after consolidation from 1961 to 1978/1979. In 1979, it was sold to a private owner and was converted in the early 1980s by the architectural firm of John Sharrat Associates into four floors of offices with shops on the ground floor. The nineteenth-century altered sanctuary was relatively intact but much of the rest of the interior held little architectural significance in comparison with the exterior. The National Park Service then permitted extensive vertical and horizontal internal subdivision provided that the developer incorporate some existing ornamental features. The exterior was completely preserved.