Milford Marker Unveiling Honoring Harriet E. Wilson

By all accounts, the idea for a memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the soldiers of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment he commanded emerged soon after Shaw, two other officers, and 74 Black soldiers died during the initial attack on a fort that protected Charleston’s harbor.  After local opposition prevented a monument in Beaufort, South Carolina, it fell to Boston’s Joshua Bowen Smith (1813-79), an African American caterer to bring the monument to fruition. This tour takes us to the home,…

Sankofa Scholar & Tour Guide: Nur Shoop Colonial Portsmouth newspapers testify to the local slave trade, runaways, abolitionists, and anti-abolitionist activities, followed by conflicting opinions of the Civil War. In the 20th century, the legacy of that early history was reflected in news about de facto segregation in housing and public places. This tour includes many of those historic landmarks from the early nineteenth through the twentieth centuries.