Among those now buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery are authors, journalists, jurists, lawyers, politicians, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs, activists, and reformers that help to illustrate the African American experience in Boston and beyond during the 19th and 20th centuries.

On February 11, 2013 the Friends of Mount Auburn launched an interpretive trail to celebrate the lives and legacies of seventeen individuals significant in telling this story.

A number of people joined us in Story Chapel as we launched this new Heritage Trail – paying special tribute to one of the figures highlighted on the Trail: freedom-seeker, abolitionist, and author Harriet Jacobs, who was born on February 11, 1813.

Watch videos of the event:

Speakers at the event included:

*Dr. Sydney Nathans, author of To Free a Family: The Journey of Mary Walker
*Rev. Stephen Kendrick, Senior Minister, First Church in Boston, and author of Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America
*Melissa Banta, author of the “Mount Auburn African American Heritage Trail,” and Consulting Curator, Historical Collections, Mount Auburn Cemetery

The African American Heritage Trail has been funded by the 1772 Foundation, Mass Humanities, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (made possible by the National Park Service, National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom), and the Cambridge Arts Council and the Watertown Cultural Council, both local agencies which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, as well as individual contributions.