Museum of African American History

The African Meeting House on Joy Street is the oldest standing black church building in the United States. Its brick facade and austere, pedimented front distinguish it from the neighboring residences on Beacon Hill. Built by free Black Bostonians in eighteen oh six, the structure served as a school and a community hub when the city’s public schools excluded Black children. William Lloyd Garrison founded the New England Anti-Slavery Society here in eighteen thirty-three, while Frederick Douglass stood at its pulpit to demand abolition.