05/27/2026
Sue Bailey Thurman (1903-1996) was an activist, author, and historian. Among her many accomplishments and contributions, she did much to preserve and celebrate Black American history in the city of Boston. In 1963, she established the Museum of African American History, currently the largest museum in New England dedicated to Black history, in the historic African Meeting House and Abiel Smith School located in Beacon Hill. Moreover, Sue Bailey Thurman and her daughter, Anne Thurman Chiarenza, created a map entitled “Freedom Trails of Negro History in Boston” to commemorate the contributions of Black Americans to freedom and independence and the fight for abolition in Boston. Depicting twenty-two sites in Boston, this map details and visualizes important parts of the revolutionary and abolitionist history of Black Boston. This trail mirrors “The Freedom Trail” established in 1951, and in doing so, draws attention to the importance of Black Americans to the city’s revolutionary and abolitionist history.
Sue Bailey and Anne Thurman’s “Freedom Trails” demonstrates the important role Black mothers play in the lives of their children as teachers and storytellers, not just in the present, but in the past as well. Caring for children, and raising them to adulthood, involves imparting them with a strong sense of who they are and where they come from, the actions and sacrifices that made it possible for the world they inhabit to exist as it does. Thus, Black mothers play an important role in helping their children develop a sense of identity and community by teaching them about the past. Through all of this, mothers are raising adults who fight for themselves, their families, and their communities, as they once did. Because to fight for the present and the future, we must understand the past. We cannot solve our current problems and anticipate potential ones without an understanding of how we got here in the first place.
