[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18312-18313]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         AFRICAN MEETING HOUSE

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, the African Meeting House in Boston is one 
of the great landmarks of American freedom, as important to 
understanding our history as Faneuil Hall and Bunker Hill.
  Not only is it the Nation's oldest black church building but 
throughout much of the 19th century it also served as the unofficial 
headquarters of the movement to abolish slavery in America. And on 
December 6--its 205th anniversary--the African Meeting House will 
reopen its historic doors after a $9 million restoration project to 
preserve the place where giants like William Lloyd Garrison and 
Frederick Douglass once thundered against the evil of human bondage.
  It was in the Meeting House basement where William Lloyd Garrison 
formed the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832. Garrison predicted 
that the principles set forth by the Society would ``shake the nation 
by their mighty power.'' Indeed, they did, because they were, in fact, 
the same principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the 
Bill of Rights, and the other founding documents of our country. The 
Meeting House is a reminder of the struggle which was inevitable 
because slavery was written into our Constitution before brave 
Americans--both white and black--shed blood and spoke powerful words to 
ensure that it was at last written out of that founding document.
  Maria Stewart, an African-American woman William Lloyd Garrison 
admired greatly, took Garrison's argument further, insisting in a 
series of speeches at the African Meeting House that under those 
founding documents, women were entitled to the same rights as men. ``It 
is not the color of the skin that makes the man or the woman, but the 
principle formed in the soul,'' she said in one of her speeches in 
1833. ``Brilliant wit will shine, come from when it will; and genius 
and talent will not hide the brightness of its luster.''
  That was never as true as when Frederick Douglass delivered ``A Plea 
for Speech in Boston'' at the African Meeting House in 1860 after an 
anti-slavery meeting elsewhere in the city had been disrupted by a mob. 
``No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than 
the right of speech,'' Douglass said. It is ``the great moral renovator 
of society and government,'' he said. Slavery itself could not survive 
free speech. ``Five years of its exercise would banish the auction 
block and break every chain in the South,'' he said.
  Tragically, it ultimately required a war to resolve the great 
contradiction at the heart of our democracy. And with the coming of the 
Civil War, the African Meeting House joined the war effort, hosting 
rallies to recruit an all-black regiment of black soldiers. The result 
was the legendary 54th Massachusetts Infantry made up of volunteers 
from as far as Haiti, led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw--the regiment 
and its commander both immortalized in monuments, literature and, of 
course, the award winning film Glory.
  Mr. President, I was proud to work with Governor Deval Patrick and 
the Massachusetts congressional delegation to get $4 million in Federal 
grants for the $9 million renovation of the African Meeting House. But 
few people have worked harder to make the renovation and rededication a 
reality than Beverly Morgan-Welch, the executive director of the Museum 
of African-American History. She has spent more than a decade 
spearheading the project, and I congratulate her for all her efforts on 
behalf of the Museum and the Meeting House and for the decades she has 
spent telling the unique and powerful story of African-Americans. It is 
an inspiring story about those whose spirits would not be broken by 
slavery, those who found ways to create families and communities under 
unimaginably brutal conditions, and those who managed--against all 
odds--to escape to freedom.
  The African Meeting House reminds us that America has come a long way 
in making good on what Dr. King called ``the promissory note'' of our 
democracy--the right to ``life, liberty and

[[Page 18313]]

the pursuit of happiness'' to all our citizens. It is a testament to 
the great strides we have made in outlawing the racial injustice that 
tainted the ideals of American society and helped make possible the 
election of our first African-American president and, in Massachusetts, 
our first African-American governor.
  But the African Meeting House also reminds us of the work and the 
struggle that continues today. If we are to be fully emancipated from 
the consequences of slavery, we must understand its history, which 
played out so eloquently, so gallantly and so courageously at the 
African Meeting House.

                          ____________________