Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord Massachusetts







	Figure 1. Herbert Wendell Gleason, Walden from Emerson's Cliff. Photographed November 7, 1899. Courtesy of the Concord Free Public Library.

	I GREW UP IN LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS, in a house two miles from Walden Pond (Figure1). The Walden Woods I knew in the 1970s and 1980s was not a place one feared. I took swimming lessons at Walden Pond in my childhood, canoed it as a teenager, and returned regularly over the years to hike its perimeter, often alone. I had no idea during my childhood or early adulthood that there had once been former slaves in the area—let alone slaves in Concord—or that Thoreau’s experiment in subsistence living was influenced by their lives. The homes of the former slaves had vanished. My white, suburban upbringing had not compelled me to think particularly hard about slavery anyway, much less about how slavery might have shaped the privileged, leafy world I inhabited. In fact, Concord was the last place I thought about when I thought about slavery at all.

	Page: 3	Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10


	Home \| Introduction \|Reviews \| Readings/Signing \| Historic Sites \| The Author \| Contact \| Purchase the Book


	© 2009-2010 Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord Massachusetts All Rights Reserved. Web Site by: jrlobdelldesign.com