African American Women of 19th Century Cambridge, MA

1. African American Women of 19th Century Cambridge, MA

This walking tour is a partnership between a History Department course at Harvard College and the Cambridge Black History Project to provide an opportunity to visit and interact with the spaces that influential Black women in Cambridge inhabited during the 19th century. These historical figures include Harriet Jacobs, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Alberta V. Scott, Pauline Hopkins, Maria Baldwin, and Mary Walker. From boarding houses to cemeteries, these sites allow tourists to consider themes centered on family, social networks, education, entrepreneurship, and many more that were central to these women’s personal and professional lives. Although we will never be able to fully understand, reconstruct, or reclaim the histories of Black women activists who walked the streets of Cambridge, this tour attempts to shed light on their accomplishments; on the impact that they had on this city, state, nation, and world during their time; and on how they might serve as models in the modern day.

2. Maria L. Baldwin House

Maria Louise Baldwin (1856-1922) was an educator and civic leader who was the first Black person and first woman to hold the position of schoolmaster in the Northeast. She was a prominent member of the Cambridge community and hosted academically and civically engaging discussions in this house. Baldwin lived in the northern half of this 19th Century duplex on Prospect St while working at the Agassiz Grammar School, now named the Maria L. Baldwin School after her. (See also the entry “Maria L. Baldwin School.”)

3. Charlotte Hawkins Brown - Cambridge English High School

Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1883-1961) was the founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, a prestigious boarding school for Black students in North Carolina. Though Brown spent most of her adult life outside of Cambridge, she maintained connections to Cambridge and Boston throughout her life, many of which she began to develop in her high school years at Cambridge English High School, which stood at this site. Brown’s alma mater, often referred to as “English,” was one of three Cambridge public high schools. English, along with The Cambridge Latin School and the Rindge Manual Training School shared this tract of land with Cambridge’s Public Library, which still stands today. By 1977, the three schools had merged to form the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, which sits across the street from the Cambridge Public Library. A love of language, visual arts, and other subjects informed Brown’s work as a holistic educator who empowered students to be full people and make change in the world.

4. Maria L. Baldwin School

Maria Louise Baldwin (1856-1922) was an educator and civic leader from Cambridge, MA. Baldwin spent 41 years as a teacher, principal, and schoolmaster at the Agassiz Grammar School. In 2002, the school was re-named the Maria L. Baldwin School. The Maria L. Baldwin School was founded in 1875 in a two-story brick building. By the second year, the school expanded to meet a growing student population. (See also the entry “Maria L. Baldwin House.”)

5. Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins' House

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859-1930), was a novelist, essayist, playwright, and magazine editor who was among the most active Black woman writers of her time. She lived in Boston for most of her life and moved to Cambridge in the early 1900s. Hopkins lived on Clifton Street (there is a historical marker at the site of her old house) and eventually moved to Jay Street in the Cambridgeport neighborhood, where she died in a tragic house fire in 1930. Let’s walk down the street where Pauline Hopkins once stepped and explore her life through her musicals, literature, and activism.

6. Alberta V. Scott - The Radcliffe Institute

Formerly the Harvard Annex and then Radcliffe College, Harvard University's Harvard-Radcliffe Institute exists on the grounds where students not only studied but also made history. One such student was Alberta V. Scott (1875-1902), the first African American woman to graduate from Radcliffe College in 1898. After graduation, Scott pursued a career as a teacher before her unfortunate death in her late twenties. This walking tour stops at Scott’s alma mater to prompt reflection on the challenges Scott faced while paving a path for many other African American women who would enroll at Radcliffe and Harvard in the future.

7. Harriet Jacobs' Story Street Boarding House

Harriet Ann Jacobs (1813-1897) was an author, abolitionist, and relief worker born into slavery in Edenton, North Carolina. Jacobs was able to escape from slavery in 1835; however, she and her two children had a lengthy, difficult journey to freedom and were not officially free until 1852. After writing a narrative that detailed the stories of her life, titled Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and participating in fundraising, relief, and abolitionist efforts, Jacobs moved into this boarding house with her daughter, Louisa Jacobs, in 1873. For two years, Jacobs’s Story Street boarding house served as the home for many prominent Harvard University students, faculty members, and tutors. Jacobs moved to Washington, D.C. in 1877, where she lived for the rest of her life. She is buried alongside her brother and daughter in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.

8. Mary Walker - The Blacksmith House/Dexter Pratt House

Mary Walker (1818-1873) was born into slavery in 1818 in North Carolina. She escaped in 1848 to Philadelphia and later settled in Massachusetts in 1850 to avoid the Fugitive Slave Law passed that year. Walker worked as a skilled caretaker and seamstress over the course of her life, never ceasing her efforts to free her mother and children from enslavement. Walker was eventually reunited with her two youngest children at the end of the Civil War. Her mother passed away and her oldest son escaped to New Jersey, though there is no record of a reunion. In June 1870, the Blacksmith House, now known as the Dexter Pratt House, at 54 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts came under Walker's ownership. The home remained in her family until the early 20th century and is now owned and used by the Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

9. Mount Auburn Cemetery

Established in 1831, Mount Auburn Cemetery was the first rural cemetery in the United States, and the first to be designed to be more than a burial ground. The 175 acres of the cemetery are lined with lush greenery, including thousands of trees, flowers, and plants. In 2003, Mount Auburn was designated a historic landmark by the National Park Service. Among the significant Cantabrigians and Bostonians buried here are activist Dorthea Dix, poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and architect Charles Eliot. Of the women on our walking tour, Mary Walker and Harriet Jacobs are buried here. We end our tour here to encourage you to reflect on the fullness of these women’s lives and how their paths may have intersected.

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African American Women of 19th Century Cambridge, MA

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