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Faneuil Hall

The Cradle of Liberty and the Price of Freedom

You are standing in front of one of the most famous buildings in America, a place known as the “Cradle of Liberty.” But though this hall rang with speeches about freedom, it was built on the profits of slavery. 

Peter Faneuil was born in 1700 into a wealthy merchant family and built an empire on transatlantic trade, including the buying and selling of human beings, carrying on the tradition of the English colonists who enslaved members of the Massachusett, Wampanoag and Nipmuc. 

In July 1637, Captain William Peirce sailed the ship Desire from Boston carrying seventeen enslaved people from the Pequot Nation, fifteen of them children, to the Caribbean, where they were sold. When the Desire returned to Boston in February 1638, it carried the first recorded enslaved Africans to arrive in the city. 

King Philip’s War dramatically escalated this violence. English settlers captured and enslaved Massachusett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuc people across the region, trafficking them as far as Barbados, Jamaica, and Madagascar. There are descendants of these Native people living in the Caribbean today.

Peter Faneuil personally arranged for the trafficking of African captives to Boston and to Caribbean plantations, corresponding directly with slave ship captains and profiting from each transaction. He donated the money to build this hall in 1742 as a gift to the city of Boston. In 2022, protesters chained themselves to Faneuil Hall’s doors demanding it be renamed.

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"SHAWMUT"

Jasmine Goodspeed

English ships
As if a great tempest had brought them here
With their wars
Once before I know
We paddles mishoes on these waters
On these shores
Our home
Now watch them as they bid on the people
Those far from their homes
In this place we once called Shawmut
Where our waters remember lost souls
Let us never forget the greed of a stolen nation
Let us never forget that everywhere you stand, we still remain
Standing here
In their Cradle of Liberty
Boston, here, Faneuil Hall
Even now, I still hear the cries of our people
In these walls
So now as new dawn lines approaching
Oh do not forget that the power they think that they’re holding
It will crumble and fall at these shores

Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed(She/They)(Hassanamisco Nipmuc) Is a story weaver with a deep love for community and the arts. She has collaborated with many different tribal organizations in both her own work and in work for the organization Ohketeau, of which she is proudly a member of the founding team. Over the past several years, Jasmine has seen her work grow and weave together its many facets. Jasmine has worked with historical societies and colleges in regard to “New England” Indigenous history and the ways in which the stories of her ancestors might be told. She has seen work as an actor both nationally and internationally. As a writer, she is always fascinated by the way her work takes shape, and is grateful for the places in which she finds her dreams(as well as theatrical passion and historical research) manifest.

References

  1. Boston Slavery Exhibit — City of Boston Archaeology Program
  2. The Complicated Legacy of Peter Faneuil — National Park Service
  3. King Philip’s War and the Cultural Landscape of Boston — Mass Humanities
  4. Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War — Yale University Press

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