Those who associate slavery in America primarily with the South may be surprised to discover that slavery existed only a mile from Tufts during the 17th and 18th centuries. Many prominent families in the Massachusetts Bay Colony engaged in the slave trade through port cities such as Boston, though puritanism and a smaller agricultural system prevented the colony from developing a larger slave population.
Though slavery in Massachusetts Bay never reached the extent that it did in the South, the number of slaves did reach nearly 5,000 during the 18th century. The town was inhabited by a number of slaves and former-slaves who fought against the tragic and unjust policy.
During the past semester, Anthropology Professor Rosalind Shaw and her class have studied the history of Belinda Royall and her fellow Medford slaves in a course entitled "Memories of the Slave Trade." Students in the class say that studying slavery has allowed them to recognize the injustices that were once rampant in an area that is seldom associated with a history of slavery.
"We are bringing a wealth of neglected information to light," junior Lara Saipe said. "I think it is nice to give due recognition to these past members of Medford."
Shaw and her students have created an exhibit on the courage of the Royall house slaves, specifically the extraordinary Belinda Royall. The exhibit is open at the Royall house through the end of September.
"In New England, there has been enormous social amnesia about the role of the slave trade and the presence of slaves," Professor Rosalind Shaw of the Anthropology department said in a recent interview with the Tufts Journal.
In addition to presenting historical artifacts, the student organizers chose to create a multimedia approach to telling the stories of the residents of Royall house by including music and spoken word dialogues that feature the culture and language from which Belinda Royall was captured.
Belinda was originally owned by Harvard Law School founder Isaac Royall, who moved to Medford in 1727 from Antigua and brought with him 27 slaves. According to 1754 records, Royall was the largest slave owner in Medford, owning 12 of the 34 slaves in the town. During the onset of the Revolutionary War, he abandoned both his George Street estate and slaves and fled to Nova Scotia, leaving behind the only estate in the Northeast with slave quarters still attached.
That same year, Massachusetts -the first state to legalize slavery - officially outlawed it, and one of Royall's abandoned slaves took it upon herself to do something that was practically unheard of at the time: she petitioned for a pension that would be taken from Royall's wealth.
Belinda Royall succeeded in receiving a pension from her former-master's funds for herself and her daughter, in possibly one of the first examples of reparations for slavery and the slave trade assigned by a government organization.
According to Shaw, the request has tremendous significance.
"She asks the state to acknowledge that the [owner's] wealth was derived from the slaves he owned," Shaw told the Journal. "She asks that the ideals of the Revolution, of freedom and equality, apply to all the people in the world-not only to whites."
The notable petition has survived to this day, and is an important piece of historical literature. It also discusses Belinda Royall's capture in present-day Ghana. She writes: "She was ravished from the bosom of her Country, from the arms of her friends - while the advanced age of her Parents, rendering them unfit for servitude, cruelly separated her from them forever!"
In addition to studying Belinda, students have focused on the story of Prince Hall, one of the most influential members of the black community at the onset of the Revolutionary War. Hall enlisted in Medford militia to fight the Loyalists as a member of the armed forces. He is remembered as one of the first American abolitionists and was a major force behind sending the petition to end slavery in the Commonwealth to the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Hall also fought the practice of kidnapping and selling free blacks into slavery. He died as a property owner with full voting rights, one of the only African-Americans to be granted these civil rights during his era.
