By Don Costanzo

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Pending a thumbs-up from their local school board, about 460 children in Florida will be saving their pennies to help restore the African Meeting House on Nantucket.

 

Last fall Len Kizner, an elementary school teacher at the Bay Vista Elementary School in St. Petersburg, Fla., saw a segment on “This Old House” about the meeting house. Last week, he read an article in the New York Times about it. Today, Kizner has become so inspired by the project he is about to ask a Florida county school board for permission to raise money within the school to give to the Nantucket landmark.

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“What better way to celebrate black history month (February) than to tie it into the first schoolhouse for free black people on your island,” said Kizner. “It’s a great project. We’re teaching children, celebrating black culture, and preserving a piece of it too.

“It supports black history heritage, and by doing that supports American heritage.”

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Kizner expects to build a scale model of the meeting house, and incorporate the project into geography and social studies classes to help the children better understand where their money is going. But what is happening at Bay Vista is only part of the impact this restoration project is having nationally.

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On Martha’s Vineyard, a Black Heritage trail has been developed in direct reaction to Nantucket’s initiative. And, Helen Seager, Convener of the African Meeting House, has further inspired the people of Portland, Maine to generate more ideas on how they could save the Abyssinian Baptist Church, considered one of the oldest black churches in the country behind one on Beacon Hill in Boston, and Nantucket’s.

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“They have said over and over again,” said Seager, “that the Nantucket experience was setting an example for them and inspiring them to go on.”

 

But, there would be no “Nantucket experience” today had it not been for the tribulations and accomplishments of men and women from another time.

 

A Sense of Place

Although Nantucket was 13 years ahead of the Commonwealth in freeing its slaves in 1770, and more than 100 years ahead of the nation in desegregating its schools in 1845, scars from the fight for freedom and equality here are explicit.

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Just before 1770, Prince Boston, a slave belonging to William Swain, took a whaling voyage with William Rotch, a highly successful entrepreneur. When Boston returned from his working journey with Rotch in 1770, Swain insisted that the black man turn over all his earnings—since, of course, he owned the slave.

 

But Rotch was well-respected on the island by this time, and decided to defend Boston in court. They won the case and Boston was the first slave set free by a jury’s verdict. It is believed that blacks on Nantucket shed the chains of slavery for good following this court decision.

 

Fifty years later a laborer and mariner named Absalom Boston, Prince Boston’s grandson, was establishing his place in history too. Boston captained an all-black crew aboard the whaling vessel Industry; he ran an inn and opened a store in an area on the island known as New Guinea, where he worked hard for the betterment of Nantucket’s black community.

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By 1821 the nearly 300 blacks who lived on Nantucket had formed a common bond in New Guinea (the name indicated the African roots of its residents, and was used to specify particular section of many cities and towns). New Guinea — thought originally to be bordered by Williams Land, Prospect, Silver, and Orange streets — consisted of a cluster of houses and gardens, as well as its own stores, an inn, and eventually a school, cemetery, and two churches.

 

One church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in 1835 in a building (which no longer exists) on West York Lane. Little is known about the activities of this church and the participation of blacks there. But just a few yards down the street stood another building, which today is a historic testament to the struggle and triumphs of Nantucket’s black inhabitants.

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One event that defined black/white dissension on the island was the Anti-Slavery Convention at the Nantucket Atheneum in 1842. In a speech, Stephen Foster called Town Meeting voters who had supported segregation in schools “pimps to satan.”

Foster hurled fierce words at members of many of the island’s churches, charging they were guilty of adultery, theft, kidnapping, and the murder of slaves. He called the clergy and church membership a “brotherhood of thieves.”

 

The pro-slavery faction, incensed at Foster’s accusations, shot back with rotten eggs and stones—a riot ensued. While police did almost nothing to calm the fighting, many blacks sought refuge and prayer in a place born as the African Baptist Church, but known then as the African School. It was at that time that the building we know of today as the African Meeting House further distinguished its place in black history on Nantucket.

 

Trucks Instead of Pews

Absalom Boston was one of four trustees of the African Baptist Church built in the heart of New Guinea on the corner of York and Pleasant Streets. That said a lot for the church, for Boston was, perhaps, the most respected and wealthiest black man who ever lived on Nantucket.

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Though construction on the building likely began in 1824, the land upon which it eventually stood was not purchased until two years later, Jeffrey Summons, a black man who worked as a carpenter on the island, purchased the land in 1826 for $10.50.

The building was used as a school, church, meeting house, for anti-slavery lectures, and even used as a makeshift medical clinic where vaccinations for small pox were given in 1834.

 

When the Nantucket Public Schools integrated in 1846, the building was no longer needed as the island’s only educational center for black children. Yet, it was still used for everything else up until about 1910 — about the same time Nantucket was reeling from economic disaster.

 

Suffering financially, Edgar Wilkes, who had taken over the church in 1888 from the Rev. James Crawford, was forced to sell the building to a trucking business owner named Henry Chase for just $250. Chase needed a place to put his trucks, so he remodeled the former black schoolhouse to accommodate his rigs. Then in 1933 Florence Higginbotham, who was already living in the house next door on York Street, bought the building and two adjacent outhouses from Chase for $3,000.

 

“Rumor was that she bought it because she didn’t want anybody else between her and the corner,” said her son, Wilhelm, in a phone interview last week from his home in Oakland, Calif.

 

Over the next several years the once proud symbol of black life on Nantucket continued to fall into grim decay, used for nothing more than a storage space for bicycles and construction equipment. Wilhelm, an Afro-Indian, inherited the property when his mother died in 1972. But Wilhelm didn’t really have much interest in the property, or Nantucket for that matter. The winters were too harsh and the work was too erratic (he did work at Glidden’s Island Seafood market for a time), and 24 years after he arrived, Wilhelm left Nantucket in 1948. He worked as a postal clerk and managed the island property from his home in Oakland.

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While Mrs. Higginbotham used the building as a source of income, actively marketing it as rental property, Wilhelm owned it “free and clear” and didn’t care much about renting it out at all, said Seager. So it sat there, virtually empty up until about 20 years ago when then Nantucket Bike Shop owner Morgan Levine, who was using the building as a bicycle repair shop, became fascinated with the old relic.

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It was Levine who raised the money for a historical study of the building, and after nearly five decades of degeneration, the wheels of transformation had begun for the old Baptist Church because of a man who just wanted a place to fix bicycles.

Revival

 

It’s been called the African School, York Street School, African Church, York Street Colored Baptist Church, Colored Baptist Church, and Pleasant Street Baptist Church. Today, we know it as the African Meeting House on Nantucket.

In 1981 Byron Rushing, then president of the Museum of Afro American History (MAAH) and now a State Representative, wrote a historical summary of the building.

 

By 1986 a historical and architectural study was performed. Three years later MAAH purchased the building to preserve and restore it, and to help provide education about the history of blacks on Nantucket. The building’s earlier neglect may also have been its saving grace. A full 70 percent of the building was original material when the museum purchased it in 1989.

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“You have to remember that neglect is a wonderful preservation strategy,” mused Seager. Since last fall, the meeting house has slowly begun to rise again as an icon to the history of blacks on Nantucket. Artifacts have been found, and the architect and builders are finding out what of the structure that now stands can and cannot be used in the restoration.

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“We’re able to save and use quite a bit of what remained,” said John James, architect for the project, who added that the building is being restored according to how it looked in 1880.

 

The wall facing York Street and the east wall are both going to have to be entirely new, said James. The south wall was cut out and a rolling door installed in 1922 to accommodate truck storage. The east wall, bearing the brunt of harsh weather, collapsed and was rebuilt with simple two-by-four construction in the mid 1970s.

 

Those two walls, said James, are being rebuilt in keeping with framing techniques of the original building, post and beam—not two-by-four. The west and north sides of the building were in much better condition and can be preserved. And though the windows could not be saved, they are, said project foreman Mike DeNofrio, being virtually duplicated. White cedar shingle will, of course, be the exterior’s finishing touch.

 

The Friends and Committee of the African Meeting House are hoping to raise $600,000 to complete restoration of the building (exterior is expected to be finished by April, but funds are still being sought for interior restoration) so that future plans for the meeting house can be realized.

 

Earlier this month, a group of people involved in the project, community members, and others met to define what the interior of the building should look like and discuss future goals.

 

“They wanted the integrity and respect for the place to remain intact,” said Sylvia Watts McKinney, executive director of the Museum of Afro American History in Boston. McKinney said replicas of the pews will be placed in the building, matching them with markings on the original floor and walls. Boards on the walls and floors had outlines of the pews, so James knew the length and width of the aisles based on those markings.

 

“They are absolutely clear,” said James. In explaining how the markings were made, the architect said to imagine painting a wall a light color, then putting an object, like a pew, up against the wall and painting around it a darker color. When the object is removed, the outline of where it was would be quite clear.

 

When the building was used as truck storage earlier this century, a reinforcing floor was built on top of the original floor. Yet, oil and gas dripped down through the newer floor and saturated much of the original floor. The stench could force use of new floorboards in place of many of the original ones.

 

“We just don’t know how much of the original flooring we could use,” said James, who added that pews would still be placed in their original positions even if the original floor cannot be preserved.

 

Also, a round wooden canopy is on the ceiling where a chandelier had once hung. The original chandelier, donated to the church by a group of whites in 1837, has yet to be found. A raised platform will also be built at the north end of the building, and a stove, originally used for heating, will be installed for “ambiance of space,” said McKinney.

 

Much of the original ceiling has rotted and will need to be replaced. “Our primary goal has been and will continue to be that this building is restored,” said McKinney.

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A History Within

Upon complete restoration of the building the African Meeting House will be more than an educational center for black history on the island.​cMcKinney explained that the nation’s oldest meeting house on Beacon Hill is used for such things as press conferences and weddings, and envisions the same on Nantucket.

 

Also planned is an audio system playing gospel and spiritual music, reenacted sermons on abolition, and more contemporary themes like Martin Luther King’s speech. In the 1940s and 50s the building was used, said Seager, for “an occasional record hop” with jazz and blues music.

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McKinney said the restored landmark should be “perceived as a living history where anyone who visits can get a sense of what it was like. “We don’t want people to just point and say ‘that’s where it used to be.’ We want people to feel that they’re a part of it.”

 

And Kelly Hanley Goode, a member of the steering committee, added that the original church was not just the center of black life in New Guinea, but on Nantucket and the country as well. “We want to be the impetus and motivation for more research, to draw black history within Nantucket’s history where it becomes a part of it — not a separate part,” said Goode.

 

Seager believes deeply in the project, not just for Nantucket, but also for other communities inspired by what is being accomplished here. She said the African Meeting House restoration project has now caught the attention of a church in Savannah, Ga. The priest there is a Nantucket native.

 

“The story of the people is preserved,” said Seager, “when the building is preserved.”