African Meeting House

Designed by architect Asher Benjamin and built in 1806, The African Meeting House stands today as the oldest black church still standing in the United States. Prior to its construction, black Bostonians could attend white churches but generally faced discrimination, being forced to sit in segregated pews. The Meetinghouse became a place for celebrations and political and antislavery meetings for abolitionists. At the end of the nineteenth century, when the black community began to migrate to the South End of Boston, the building was sold to a Jewish congregation and remained a synagogue until it was purchased by the Museum of African American History in the 1970s and listed as a landmark on the National Register of Historic Places.