African American Heritage Trail
The history of Berkshire County is abundant with locations that highlight our African American heritage and excellence. The following listing is a compilation of sites in the region that garner significance to the past and present experiences of Black people in the Berkshires.
Williamstown
Frank Grant Childhood Home
Historical marker on Spring Street
Childhood home of Pittsfield-born Hall of Fame baseball player Frank Grant who played for the Buffalo Bisons of the International League from 1886 to 1888.
Dalton
Gulf Road
The historic Gulf Road is believed to have been part of the Underground Railroad corridor that operated from Lebanon, New York, through Pittsfield to Dalton. The Railroad used a cave beneath the road in Dalton.
Fitch-Hoose House
6 Gulf Road
At Wizard’s Glen a small community of Blacks sprang up in the 1820s, in a cluster of nearly a dozen small cabins. Gulf Road passes from Lanesboro Gulf in Lanesboro through Wizard’s Glen in Dalton. Dalton Historical Commission has restored the Fitch-Hoose House here, long believed active with the Underground Railroad.
Lanesboro
Todd House
Marked by plaque on Berkshire Mall Drive
The Todd House, believed a station on the Underground Railroad transported the enslaved from Sand Lake, NY, in wagons used to pick up loads of sand in Lanesboro for a glass factory.
Pittsfield
Second Congregational Church of Pittsfield
50 Onota Street
One of Berkshire County’s most ardent abolitionists was minister and formerly enslaved Samuel Harrison (1818-1900), who in 1850 became the first minister of the Second Congregational Church of Pittsfield, founded in 1846 as the first Black church in the country.
The Reverend Samuel Harrison House
82 Third Street
In 1863 Harrison was appointed chaplain of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and promptly protested discriminatory pay practices. The Rev. Samuel Harrison House is regularly accessible to the public for events and by appointment.
- 203 Wahconah Street
Rev. Samuel Harrison and Wife are buried in Pittsfield Cemetery.
Price Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church
163 Linden Street
Following Second Congregational Church, Price Memorial A. M. E. Zion church was the second predominantly Black church in Pittsfield, founded in 1958 by Fannie Cooper. Its pastor for more than 25 years was Willard H. Durant.
193 Robbins Avenue
Currently a community nonprofit that offers food pantry, a clothing boutique, and serves lunch to those in need
Price Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church’s pastor for more than 25 years was Willard H. Durant, who in 1982 became director of the Christian Center, a community center for interdenominational worship, established in the 1960s.
Victory Temple United Church of God in Christ
154 Dewey Avenue
Another historic community center for interdenominational worship established in the 1960s
Persip Park
Corner of North Street and Columbus Avenue (175 North Street)
Alfred K. Persip was the first Black from Berkshire County to enlist at the outbreak of World War I. Brothers Charles (1892-1982) and John “Popeye” Persip (1887-1983) also served in the war. Their maternal grandfather, Charles Hamilton served in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1983 Persip Park was dedicated to the Persip family.
Charles A. Persip American Legion Post 68
41 Wendell Avenue
Named after Charles Persip, who served in World War I.
Berkshire County chapter of the NAACP
The Berkshire County chapter of the NAACP was organized in 1918. Located at 467 North Street during its most active period in the 1960s, it sent residents to participate in the 1963 March on Washington, registered voters during the Freedom Summer of 1964 in Alabama and Mississippi, created affordable housing in Pittsfield, and organized sympathy protests at Woolworth’s on North street when the chain refused to serve African Americans at their lunch counters in the South.
Dorothy Amos Park
310-340 West Street
Dorothy Amos Park is named for Dorothy Reid Amos (1929-1974), the first Black guidance counselor in the Pittsfield schools. She founded Pittsfield’s Early Childhood Development Center in 1971.
Frances Chlöe Jones-Whitman’s mural
South side of the Adlib Building, corner of North Street and Columbus Avenue
Mount Rushmore depiction including empowering and impactful black leaders
The just-unveiled mural by artist Frances Chlöe Jones-Whitman is a Mount Rushmore depiction featuring local legends in the black community including W.E.B. Dubois; Elizabeth Freeman; Samuel Harrison; Agrippa Hull; Frances Jones-Sneed; James Van Der Zee and Stephanie Wilson. The artist says that the mural is an homage to those who are past and presently doing great things and are a symbol of Black Excellence.
Concrete wall below Jubilee Hill, on College Way on the West Side of Pittsfield
Pops Peterson's painting “Walk With Her,” featuring Ruby Bridges Hall, is inspired by Peterson's reimagining of Rockwell's 1964 painting, “The Problem We All Live With.” Also, there was an unveiling of Rainbow Ruby at the Lichtenstein Gallery, another work by Pops Peterson.
Lenox/Lee
Church on the Hill cemetery
169 Main Street
During the Civil War, the all-Black 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment was formed in 1863 under Col. Robert Gould Shaw, a member of a prominent Boston abolitionist family. Nearly one-half of the regiment was killed, wounded, or taken prisoner during the assault on Fort Wagner in South Carolina. Shaw and his wife Anna Kneeland Haggerty honeymooned at her father’s home in Lenox. Her grave is in the cemetery at Church on the Hill.
Lee Memorial Hall
32 Main Street
Many monuments in the Housatonic River Valley commemorate the men–Black and White–who fought in the Civil War. The largest is in the Lee Memorial Hall. A plaque in the main hall includes 54th Regiment soldiers from Lee.
The Music Inn
Hawthorne Road (the site is now the location of Wheatleigh hotel)
The Music Inn, a premier center for jazz education and performance, was a major venue for Black musical talent.
Becket
358 George Carter Road at Route 20
Trailblazing African American dancer-choreographers were introduced at the Ted Shawn Theatre, Jacob’s Pillow Dance. The theater’s timber beams were felled and hand-hewn by local Black entrepreneur Warren H. Davis. Jacob’s Pillow is believed to be a station on the Underground Railroad.
Stockbridge
Oil portrait of Agrippa Hull and photograph of Margaret “Peggy” Timbroke
Stockbridge Library Collection, 46 Main Street
Agrippa Hull (1759-1848) was a free-born Stockbridge resident who served as aide to General Kosciuszko during the Revolutionary War. He and his wife, Margaret (“Peggy”) Timbroke, were among the first Black entrepreneurs in the Berkshires, noted for their catering talents. An oil portrait of Agrippa Hull and a photograph of Peggy hang in the Stockbridge Library collection.
Stockbridge Cemetery
Main Street
Elizabeth (“Mum Bett”) Freeman is buried in the “Sedgwick Pie” in the northeast corner of Stockbridge Cemetery. Agrippa Hull is buried on the western side of Stockbridge Cemetery, to the left of the first path.
9 Glendale Road, Route 183
Local Black children served as models for Norman Rockwell’s portrayals of landmark civil rights events, such as The Problem We All Live With and New Kids in the Neighborhood, Norman Rockwell Museum.
Great Barrington/Alford
duboisnhs.org
Route 23, 0.25 miles west of the junction with Route 71
The W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite, a National Historic Landmark, is the Burghardt homestead where the maternal family of W.E.B. Du Bois lived from the 1820s and where Du Bois himself lived for a time as a young boy.
At the foot of Church and River Streets
The W.E.B. Du Bois River Park, at the foot of Church Street, acknowledges Du Bois’s lifelong love of the Housatonic River and Berkshire environment.
Mahaiwe Cemetery
South Main Street
The graves of W.E.B. Du Bois’s wife Nina and their children Burghardt and Yolande are at the Mahaiwe Cemetery. Historic marker.
W.E.B. Du Bois Mural
Taconic parking lot, off of Railroad Street
The W.E.B. Du Bois Mural was painted by Railroad street Youth Project participants. Information about Du Bois is available at the Du Bois Center of American History, 684 South Main Street.
Egremont Sheffield Road
Intersects Route 23 from the south, 1.5 miles west of the Du Bois Boyhood Homesite
The scenic Egremont Sheffield Road, between the W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite and the Col. John Ashley House in Ashley Falls, was the route taken by W.E.B. Du Bois on trips to Great Barrington from New York City. The route passes a monument commemorating the dispersal of Shay’s Rebellion troops in 1787.
9 Elm Court
Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church, the oldest black institutional building in the Berkshires, was founded as a society in 1870. The building opened in 1887. The congregation has disbanded, but nonprofit Clinton Church Restoration since 2016 has been working to preserve the building as a the home of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center for Freedom and Democracy, the first museum and living memorial in North America dedicated to Du Bois’s life and legacy.
Macedonia Baptist Church
9 Rosseter Street
Macedonia Baptist Church was founded by business entrepreneur (Mrs.) Martha Crawford in 1944. In the mid-20th century, women from the Clinton and Macedonia churches joined with women throughout the county to form a branch of the Council of United Church Women to work for social justice.
Sheffield
Ashley House and Freeman Room
117 Cooper Hill Road
In 1735 Col. John Ashley and his wife Hannah moved into their new home, along with Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, who was enslaved. In the Ashely household, a center of Sheffield’s social, economic, and political life, Bett was exposed to the freedoms put forth in the new state constitution. Basing her case on these ideals, Freeman sued for her own freedom. The Ashley House and Freeman Room are managed by The Trustees of Reservations.
Ashley’s Falls’s Historic District Marker
On the green in front of the post office
Visit Ashley’s Falls’s Historic District Marker which recognizes Freeman’s suit for freedom.
Sourced from the Upper Housatonic Valley National Herritage Area, and with support from Dr. Kendra Field, Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts University, and Eugenie Sills, Interim Executive Director of Clinton Church Restoration, Inc.
—Maisy Seckler