Neighborhood activists and members of the faith-based community in Boston marched on Faneuil Hall in Boston Thursday, August 2, in the wake of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s refusal to engage black citizens of Boston in discussion around hearing to rename Faneuil Hall.Faneuil Hall is connected to the practice of slavery in Boston. Activists and clergy want to rename Faneuil Hall to Crispus Attucks Hall to summon deeper conversations about structural racism in Boston a set a foundation for generations to come regarding racial reconciliation in Boston.
Crispus Attucks was the first die in what became the revolutionary war of independence. He is an original American hero. Upon his death, his body laid in state at Faneuil for three days.
“Unfortunately Mayor Walsh is trying to say that we are erasing history with our actions. That’s absurd. History cannot be erased. But history can be suppressed. And that’s exactly what’s happened to black history in Boston,” said Kevin Peterson, founder of the New Democracy Coalition. “Tell tell Boston’s history without acknowledging its past pain sand horrors is to tell a lie.”
For over a year, an interracial collective of clergy has been pushing for changing the name of Faneuil Hall because the public edifice is connected to slave owner and human trafficker Peter Faneuil. Faneuil Hall is named after Peter Faneuil.Activists and clergy want to rename Faneuil Hall to Crispus Attucks Hall to summon deeper conversations about structural racism in Boston a set a foundation for generations to come regarding racial reconciliation in Boston.
After public statements from the city’s Mayor Martin Walsh, who refuses the name change, activists are now calling on a black-led boycott.
In a letter written to the president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce president James Rooney this weekend, Kevin Peterson stated: “But because our contentions have gone unheeded; and because our cries have gone unaddressed, and because our earnest charges have gone ignored, we are calling on a national black boycott of Faneuil Hall and its Quincy Market Place where the souls of black slaves were sold.”
Peterson continues: “Black people in this city and across the country can no longer tolerate the denial, disrespect and disassociation that the white political and economic hegemony in this city has directed over them. We will therefore, concertedly reach out to black organizations, tourists associations and policy influence makers in the city and nationwide to comply with our boycott. We will stage sit-ins and demonstrations across the city, risking arrest.
Peterson added that boycott interventions will begin this summer and that blacks will boycott the downtown tourist area which attract 20 million visitors a year.
CONTACT: KEVIN C. PETERSON
617.304.5068 OR 617.506.9028
