Gabrielle Okun
An advocacy group called for a “national black boycott” of Boston’s historic landmark Faneuil Hall because it was named after a slave trader.
New Democracy Coalition, a Boston-based advocacy group, wants a national “black-led boycott” of Faneuil Hall, the Boston Herald reported. The historic attraction was named after 18th-century slave trader Peter Faneuil, who funded the building project, according to Boston historians.
Kevin Peterson, the founder of the New Democracy Coalition, wrote a letter Friday to urge president and CEO of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce James E. Rooney, calling the name change of Faneuil Hall “incandescently clear.”
“We are calling on a national black boycott of Faneuil Hall and its Quincy Market Place where the souls of black slaves were sold. Black people in this city and across the country can no longer tolerate the denial, disrespect, destain and disassociation that the white political and economic hegemony in this city has directed over them,” wrote Peterson.
“We will therefore, concertedly reach out to black organizations, tourists associations and policy influence makers in the city and nationwide to comply with our boycott. We will stage sit-ins and demonstrations across the city, risking arrest,” Peterson added. He also claimed that the group has also reached out to Boston Mayor Martin Walsh who refused to hear their case.
“Crispus Attucks Hall would be an apt name replacing Faneuil Hall because Attucks was a more significant historical figure related to the birth of American democracy,” the advocacy group wrote on its Facebook page in June. Crispus Attucks was an African-American man who died during the Boston Massacre.
Massachusetts removed its only Confederate monument, which was located on Georges Island in Boston Harbor, reported Curbed Boston.
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