(drums beating rhythmically) (light music) - [Narrator] Concord, Massachusetts.

The North Bridge.

It was here that the shot heard round the world sparked the American Revolution.

(guns firing) Every April, people gather to relive the moment British troops fired on colonial Minutemen encountering fierce resistance.

The clash was over in seconds, but the march for independence was on.

(guns firing) (light string music) - There's a lot of pride knowing you grew up where the American Revolution started.

I thought we were the best Americans you could find because we had such a deep investment in a history of liberty and equality for all.

- [Narrator] But that Concord pride obscures its role in another seminal chapter in American history, the nation's original sin.

- Massachusetts was not only profiting from the slave trade, but there is no slave trade without Massachusetts.

- It's a collar, it fits a human neck, it doesn't fit livestock.

- [Narrator] It's a secret history that is now coming to light.

- There were Black militia men at the battles of Lexington and Concord.

- [Narrator] A story of extraordinary wealth tainted by a dark legacy.

- What kind of town did I grow up in such that no one told me the truth about the past?

Why did no one tell me why the secret was kept for so long?

- [Narrator] May 21st, 2010, a 200-year-old house is on the move.

(soft music) (singer humming) It once belonged to a family of African Americans whose history has been lost.

- We have a story to tell surrounding this little house.

- [Narrator] It's one of several high-profile projects in Massachusetts that challenge popular versions of US history.

In Medford, excavation at an old colonial mansion uncovers a sordid past.

- Clear segregation of space between white and Black, master/slave, clean/unclean.

- [Narrator] In Cambridge, a top university faces shocking evidence of racist behavior.

- It's pretty explicit.

It wasn't just general discrimination, it wasn't even just generally white supremacy.

- [Narrator] In Belmont, an old school bell triggers an intense debate.

- You should feel just as uncomfortable as I do walking past this bell every day.

- [Narrator] All at a time of intense national soul-searching about America's legacy of racial conflict.

(mellow string music) The story begins in Concord, the town heralded as the birthplace of American liberty.

Founded in 1635, Concord is one of the oldest European settlements in North America.

- Concord has always been a prosperous place.

The architecture is beautiful, the landscape is beautiful.

The waterways are beautiful.

All in all, Concord addresses their image in a good way, effective way.

I mean, they have something like on the order of a million people that are tourists that visit, that's part of the economy.

- [Radio Host] Live from the Old North Bridge in Concord, 200 years and one day where the shot heard round the world was fired, and where President Ford will deliver an address commemorating our nation's 200th birthday.

- [Narrator] In 1975, Concord celebrated the bicentennial of the North Bridge battle that triggered the War of Independence.

(light tense music) - 200 years ago today, American Minutemen raised their muskets at the Old North Bridge and answered a British volley.

The American Revolution had begun.

- [Narrator] Carl Chandler was 23 when he attended the event.

One of the few African Americans in the crowd, his ancestry in Massachusetts goes back 11 generations.

- The bicentennial was a good reason to have a good party, a good celebration.

You stop and think about descendants of the Mayflower, for instance.

That's a lot of people, so if they get together for an event for some ancestor, then a lot of people will show.

- [Narrator] Also there that day was Elise Lemire, a young girl from neighboring Lincoln.

- Here's a picture of me dressing up for the bicentennial.

You would only dress up in colonial clothing if you wanted to say how proud you were that we birthed a country that is based on liberty for all, equity for everyone.

So it was really kind of a bubble for at least a lot of white children like me, white privileged kids.

- [Narrator] The crowd that day could be forgiven for thinking the heroes of Concord and Lexington were all white men.

(soft dramatic music) (singer vocalizing) But Carl Chandler knew better from his own family history.

- It was very white.

I understood there was a historical representation that went on in the books.

My ancestors weren't necessarily in those books, but I knew the history so it was okay.

I knew that I had an ancestor that fought at Concord Bridge.

- [Narrator] Elise Lemire's white Concord bubble continued well into her 20s until an encounter with a town's most famous citizen, the author Henry David Thoreau.

In the mid-19th century, Thoreau lived in Walden Woods on the outskirts of Concord, on land belonging to fellow author Ralph Waldo Emerson.

(engaging tense music) Public historian Richard Smith, using speech patterns based on Thoreau's writings, impersonates the author.

- My name is Henry Thoreau, I am a writer.

For the last two years I've lived here in my one room house at Walden Pond.

I'm here to write a book.

I am also here to live my life deliberately.

As I tell Mr. Emerson and others, I'm here to front only the essential facts of life, to do away with a lot of the so-called necessities of life.

- [Narrator] The result of Thoreau's two years, two months, and two days in the cabin would be his most famous book, "Walden: A Life in the Woods."

It was a philosophical treaties on labor, leisure, self-reliance, and individualism.

In the book, Thoreau advocated a return to nature and to simple living.

Thoreau also included observations about the forest around him and about the people who used to live in Walden Woods before him.

(tense music) At graduate school, in an American literature class, Elise was asked to read Thoreau's "Walden" from beginning to end.

It would transform her life.

- I was sitting in a classroom at Rutgers University with a very esteemed literature scholar reading "Walden" for the first time, I was also falling in love with the person I knew I was gonna marry.

So he happens to be African American and I knew I was gonna be bringing him home to my house to meet my family.

- There were many people of color living in Walden Woods, former slaves, former inhabitants.

I am here by choice, but there were many people in the last century who were living here because it was the only place that they were allowed to live.

People of color, former slaves.

East of my bean field across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham Esqr., a gentleman of Concord Village who built his slave a house and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods.

Some say that he was a Guinea Negro.

- Thoreau was telling me for the first time people had been enslaved in Concord and he was telling me there had been people enslaved here.

And then the formerly enslaved had settled here and for some reason they hadn't stayed.

A somewhat diverse population right after slavery had become a predominantly white suburb.

How had that happened?

Why had it happened and what would that mean for someone like my husband coming to visit?

I went to the public schools here in the 1970s and 1980s.

I was never taught in school ever, never ever taught in school that there was slavery in Massachusetts.

So I had no idea about the true history of my state, but I also had no idea of the true history of my town.

I certainly didn't know I grew up on a former plantation.

And it wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I learned about this history and all of a sudden what I knew about my home had dramatically shifted.

What kind of town did I grow up in such that no one told me the truth about the past?

That was really my first question.

Why did no one tell me?

And that's been a journey to figure out not only what the history was, but why the secret was kept for so long.

- [Narrator] For many Americans, slavery is considered a sin of the South.

Yankee states in the north were the home of abolitionists.

Elise was shocked to discover that northern free states like Massachusetts also had slavery until the late 18th or early 19th centuries.

Its legacy has long been hiding in plain sight.

For example, in Medford, between Concord and Boston, in the 1990s, a group of researchers began to uncover the truth, starting with an old mansion in this historic town.

These two buildings had fallen into disrepair after the 18th century.

(soft tense music) - The reason the house survived at all was due to the Daughters of the American Revolution, one of the many patriotic groups that came into being after the centennial in 1876.

People who were working here as volunteers, they were here because it was a social club and they enjoyed being part of this social group that was looking in a sort of romanticized way back at history.

They wanted it to be frozen in time.

(light music) - [Narrator] The mansion turned Colonial Museum had belonged to the merchant Isaac Royall Jr. before the American Revolution.

In the early 1990s, Julia Royall, an eighth generation indirect descendant of Isaac Royall Jr. moved to Massachusetts from the American South.

- When I moved to the area, it seemed inevitable that I should go to the Royall House to visit.

- [Narrator] Julia Royall knew from her own family history that Massachusetts used to have slavery and that her ancestor uncle had benefited from it.

- I grew up knowing about the Royall House and slave quarters.

As far as discussing whether slavery was a good or bad thing, I think in my family it was definitely not something that was good.

- [Narrator] Her prominent ancestry gained Julia a seat on the museum's board.

- Here I am finding myself in a kind of interesting position.

I'm on the board at the Royall House, which means that I can have some role in its direction of the house and the history.

And I meet Archie Epps.

- [Narrator] The late Archie Epps was the African American Dean of Students at Harvard University, which is only two and a half miles from the Royall House.

- And I took him out and together we came up with some ideas for how we could make that history more available because there was nothing.

(soft music) We developed what we called "A New Vision for the Royall House."

- [Narrator] Julia was most intrigued by the smaller building once used as the living quarters for enslaved people.

- An interesting question that Archie asked, which is how did slavery in the north play out?

I knew about slavery in the South.

Oh my gosh, you know, we all studied slavery in the South, but here it was in the north.

This is a different story.

This is a story that hasn't been told.

Nobody that I was aware of was doing that.

- [Narrator] The Royall House's slavery investigation was highly relevant.

In Boston in the 1980s, 22% of the population were African American, many of them descendants of people who had been enslaved.

Many lived in depressed areas, unemployment was high, incomes were low, and access to higher education was limited.

It was a similar story in other US cities.

(glass shatters) In 1992, riots erupted in Los Angeles.

A mainly white jury had cleared four white policemen of battery after they beat up Black motorist Rodney King.

People were angry.

Racial injustice persisted in the US long after the abolition of slavery.

Yet back in Massachusetts, many people continued to be oblivious that slavery had even existed in their home state.

The work at Royall House became more relevant than ever.

Peter Gittleman, working with Historic New England, joined the effort to uncover the story.

- We were planning to start making changes to the storyline, to the interpretation.

What that necessarily meant was de-installing many of the rooms that these women's grandmothers had put together in 1910 and 1911.

And that was painful for them.

We were challenged by somebody who didn't want to see a slave quarters in New England and who said, "How do you know that building was a slave quarters?"

So the reason for actually starting the archeology was simply to confirm that that building was here in the 18th century.

(dramatic tense music) - [Narrator] An excavation of the Royall House grounds began led by archeologist Alexandra Chan from Boston University.

Her team found discarded items including pipes, game pieces, and sewing tools equipment that would've belonged to the enslaved, 65,000 artifacts in all.

- One of the things that I was most keen to tackle head on was this pernicious and persistent myth of northern slavery as having been a gentler, kinder, more family-like kind of servitude.

This is a myth that has gone on for hundreds of years and probably can be traced back as early as 1721.

- [Narrator] Part of this myth was that masters and slaves lived in harmony together.

- The archeology was showing something very different.

Clear segregation of space between white and Black, master/slave, clean/unclean.

- [Narrator] The excavation revealed that the enslaved spent any non-working time in the south of the grounds, out of sight from their enslavers.

- If you can't see them, they can't see you.

This was a dirty and messy and sort of unpleasant place to be.

And from the Royall's perspective perhaps would have underscored the inferiority of the people who had inhabited this space.

- Often people ask me if slavery was somehow kinder and gentler in New England and specifically in Massachusetts.

And I'm always puzzled by that question 'cause the very nature of slavery just isn't kind and gentle, just generally, nor is the existential state of it kind and gentle.

- [Narrator] Archival research revealed that Isaac Royall Jr. hadn't just been a slave trader, he'd been a prolific one.

- We know from evidence in Medford newspapers, but also in Boston that Isaac Royall Jr. bought and sold people.

He's often either advertising to sell someone that has a particular skill set or he is advertising to buy someone with a particular skillset.

So the documentation lies in the newspaper and there's also documentation of him selling children and breaking up families on the Royall plantation.

That was very common.

(soft music) (singer vocalizing) - [Narrator] When Alexandra researched the archives, she discovered the first names of more than 40 enslaved people on the Royall estate.

In total, Massachusetts enslaved nearly 5,000 people in 1780, 1.7% of its population.

- If someone owns you, they own your future.

So basically, if you have children, they're consigned to what you are.

And to me, that's the most hurtful is you don't see a future.

- [Narrator] Prior to the excavations in Medford, African Americans were making their voices heard clearly in events like the Million Man and Million Woman Marches in the mid-'90s in Washington and Philadelphia.

At the time, Black Americans earned 40% less than white Americans and had a six-year lower life expectancy.

It meant that 130 years after slavery was finally abolished, African Americans remained seriously disadvantaged.

(soft string music) Back in Concord, Elise Lemire had begun an investigation into her own town's links to slavery.

- Now, when you show up in the Concord Special Collections here and you ask to see what they have on slavery, there's no subject heading for it.

And that's because archives are a way of preserving a very specific version of the past.

- [Narrator] Elise looked into the names listed in Thoreau's book, "Walden."

It included an enslaved man, Brister Freeman, and his enslaver, John Cuming.

- [Elise] Because Thoreau put Brister in the historical record, it was easier to find out more about him.

In other words, I could go to the archives and look for land deeds 'cause I had a name.

- "There where grow still the apple trees which Brister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste."

- [Elise] Brister Freeman had a strong personality and I think for that reason he left the largest number of marks in the archive.

Probably by the age of two he was given away and his new enslaver keeps him for about five years until his daughter is going to marry John Cumming.

So John Cumming enters the picture at this point because he gets Brister as a wedding present.

- [Narrator] Young Brister Freeman lived on John Cumming's farm where he was forced to do manual labor and other chores for his enslaver.

- In the 18th century, this was a very palatial home and John Cumming, who owned this home, had enough money to buy all these plate glass windows, so multiple rooms filled with light.

This was a massive farm and he had a long driveway lined with trees, so you would approach this and be impressed.

John Cumming has been to Harvard, he's got a medical degree and he's got a rich father.

And by being an enslaver, he was able to have a professional career.

- [Narrator] Elise discovered that Brister was one of 40 people who were in enslaved in Concord.

Enslavers included the family of the preacher, William Emerson, the grandfather of the famous Concord author, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

(soft tense music) - This house is where Concord's minister William Emerson lived.

His family was also a family of enslavers.

William Emerson owned several slaves.

They watched American colonists stand up for their own liberty, certainly not for the liberty of those enslaved here in Concord.

- [Narrator] Slavery was fully entrenched in Massachusetts by the mid-1770s when the cause of freedom brought America to the brink of revolution.

(lively fanfare music) - [Announcer] These were the first, "these embattled farmers," as the poet Emerson called them.

The Minutemen who stood at Concord Bridge and fired the shot heard round the world.

(guns firing) Here in a fury of rebellion, the American Army was born.

- The Redwoods fired a volley into the militia men.

(guns firing) And that's when Major John Buttrick said, "Fire, fellow soldiers, for God's sake, fire."

For the first time in American history, American militia were ordered to fire onto the king's troops.

And that was for all intents and purposes the beginning of the American Revolution.

- [Narrator] For enslaved people like Brister, the question arose whether the war would help them gain their freedom.

- A little known piece of American history, especially here in Concord, is that there were Black militia men at the battles of Lexington and Concord.

- [Narrator] An estimated 25,000 African Americans fought during the War of Independence.

Most joined the ranks of the British who had promised freedom to the enslaved, but the Patriot rebels also recruited Black soldiers.

- I think Brister saw that, well, here's some possibilities for me because eventually they're gonna need somebody like me.

- [Narrator] Brister was one of the 5,000 African American soldiers who joined the Patriot Army under George Washington.

- The war goes on and on and on, and over time, it becomes harder and harder to get people to fight and those who were wealthy paid people to do it for them.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Brister used his time in the Army successfully to wrangle his freedom.

He returned to Concord, no longer enslaved, and with his chosen surname, Freeman.

- Brister Freeman's life, slave for 25, 30 years, now he does come back to Concord, you might ask why, why would you do that?

He couldn't go anywhere else.

If you moved into New Town, you had to prove that you had the money to pay your taxes and take care of yourself, feed yourself, house yourself.

So he would not have been allowed to settle anywhere else.

So he has to come back here.

- It was his home, he claimed it as his home.

If you grow up in some place, even if the conditions are onerous, it's your home.

And he came back with the idea, "Well, I can build something and make something better."

- [Narrator] Further east in Medford, the people enslaved by the Royall family also faced change.

Isaac Royall Jr. had backed the crown, the losing side in the war.

He abandoned the people on his estate and fled to London where he died in 1781.

In his will, Isaac Royall gave freedom to the enslaved on his estate, including African-born Belinda Sutton.

To find out more about Belinda Sutton's story, Alexandra Chan and Penny Outlaw visit the state archives.

Not only did Belinda accept her freedom, she also submitted a legal petition to receive compensation from the Royall estate for a lifetime of enslaved labor.

(soft music) (singer vocalizing) - Isaac Royall Jr. and Belinda were more than likely age cohorts.

- [Penny] They're probably contemporaries.

- [Alexandra] And lived totally parallel lives.

- [Narrator] Belinda describes her African homeland where she was kidnapped and enslaved at the age of 12.

- [Penny] Armed band of white men driving many of her countrymen in chains.

- And being ripped literally from the arms of her parents, never to see them again.

- Being taken from parental affection.

- She appeals to the court at the end.

She says that she has denied the enjoyment of one morsel of that immense wealth and accumulated by her own industry.

- She understands very clearly what we're arguing about now as a country.

- That's right.

I mean, looking at the (indistinct) of Black Lives Matter movement.

- Exactly.

- [Narrator] The court awarded Belinda a small annual pension of 15 pounds and 12 shillings.

It was only ever paid out once.

Her case coincided with the effective banning of slavery in Massachusetts through a series of court decisions after 1783.

240 years later, Belinda Sutton is honored with a historical marker outside of Isaac Royall's former mansion.

But what do the Concord archives reveal about the fate of Brister Freeman?

Using his remaining soldier's pay, Brister bought the only piece of land he could afford, a tiny and infertile plot in Walden Woods.

- So one reason white Concordians didn't mind Brister Freeman living here was because the ground was infertile, but also because he was out of sight.

- [Narrator] Today the plot is overgrown.

- A ditch fence.

This tells us there were former inhabitants here and this is where we know Brister Freeman's lot was because Thoreau surveyed it.

But it's one of the very rare marks in the landscape that remains of Brister Freeman's presence here.

Brister Freeman gets married and has children and somehow they need to live on this acre of field.

Brister Freeman was able to grow some things on his land.

We do know from Thoreau that he planted apple trees, but what was his family doing for protein?

So they already are starting in a very bad place.

Wow.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Then Brister's former enslaver, John Cumming, died.

Would his will include any compensation or a pension for Brister?

- So this is the probated estate of Colonel John Cummings of Concord.

It's a fairly long will.

He writes, "I give him bequeath to my two Negroes that was Bristo and Gem, 35 pounds sterling."

Although the will leaves them 35 pounds sterling as a legacy, he didn't feel that they were responsible enough to take care of their own financial affairs.

So he asked that the money be left with the town.

- It was a easy way for Cumming's to address his conscience.

Like saying, "Well, you're free, but only to a certain degree, you still have to answer to somebody for your comforts.

And, you know, it was a gesture, not a good one.

- [Narrator] In 2006, the Royall House in Medford changed its name to the Royall House and Slave Quarters.

- It was a way to make sure that both the Royall House and the Slave Quarters was going to be equally represented, that people who came to this museum knew that they were going to learn about the history of slavery.

- The room that you came into was the original slave quarters.

Belinda Sutton lived her life on this site.

It was the first time we would be rolling out a new tour that talked about the enslaved people that lived on that property.

I talk a lot about the two different populations.

One population were so wealthy that they didn't have to work.

They were people of leisure.

You have the other population that's working 24 hours a day, working in the kitchen to be able to serve the meals to the Royalls and all of their guests.

Someone's going in to all the rooms overnight and keeping the fires going.

Warming pans flush with hot coals and sticking them in the bed by the toes of the Royalls and their guests.

One population enabling the lifestyle of the other population.

There would be people who would fight with me about the historical fact.

So there'd be somebody on the tour would say, "No, that's simply not true.

You have a political agenda."

And that was before I did.

- [Narrator] On some occasions, Penny Outlaw would display an object from before abolition to settle the argument.

- It's a collar, it fits a human neck, it doesn't fit livestock, it doesn't fit cows, it doesn't fit sheep.

The key thing here is it has this piece that interlocks and there would've been an iron stake that went through here and it's a way of controlling the enslaved person through here.

This is cast iron, it's heavy.

And then I put it on a table 'cause I don't wanna force people to touch it who aren't comfortable touching it.

But no one asked me during that tour whether slavery was kinder in New England.

(light music) - [Narrator] As the Royall House and Slave Quarters was educating people about Massachusetts history of slavery.

- Change has come to America.

(crowd cheering) - [Narrator] History was being made in Washington DC, the inauguration of the first Black president.

- And if all of you are fired up and ready to go with me.

- [Narrator] Was America finally ready to address historic injustices against African Americans?

Back in Concord, Elise Lemire's book, "Black Walden" was released the same year.

It revealed the truth about Concord, the town where American democracy was born and its historic involvement in slavery.

One of the book's main characters is Brister Freeman.

He faced discrimination at every turn.

- Brister Freeman has no money to pay this poll tax.

The town has the 35 pounds from John Cumming.

Why don't they use that to pay the tax?

Instead, what they say to him is, "Well, we're gonna take your land."

They didn't want him to have the civic identity that land ownership allows you.

That's about creating a boundary around the town, this is a white town and will be a white town.

- [Narrator] Even today, less than 3% of Concord's population is African American.

Some believe this is partly due to a racial discrimination practice called redlining, which dates back to at least the 1930s.

- There has not been a place of thriving for Black and Brown communities to at least feel that they can stay here in Concord or grow here in Concord.

And that is due to redlining.

- [Narrator] The red sections on this map show the only areas where Black people would be eligible for a mortgage.

They would not have access to better neighborhoods marked here in yellow, green, and blue.

- You can find maps of what was redlined and what was able to be purchased and then what wasn't.

And oftentimes if you keep layering over that map up until this, even this year, you can start to see how Brown communities were washed out or built on top of, or eradicated for a highway.

It's illegal now, but do people still do it?

Absolutely.

White communities were made to stay white.

- [Narrator] Dr. Maria Madison moved to Concord in the early 2000s.

- Blacks are always looking to determine, first of all, is it safe, right?

And to determine safe it's what are the kernels of history and how well are they being told?

- [Narrator] When it came to Concord's African American history, there was little to go by until a chance discovery in 2010.

- We noticed this house coming up for demolition.

- [Narrator] Archives revealed that the house once belonged to Caesar Robbins, an African American Army veteran who'd escaped slavery and moved to Concord with his family after abolition.

- That they were living off in Great Meadow on a less than arable parcel of land where they were able to farm, but it's also the outcast family.

He dies in 1822, and the next year, his son Peter at 31 purchases this house for about $270.

- Caesar Robbins, it's a story of continuous movement up.

He fights for freedom.

He has descendants who then carry that lineage on in their own ways.

They're able to make a place for themselves here in Concord that was not often seen everywhere else.

- [Narrator] In 2011, Maria led an effort to save the Robbins House from demolition.

They bought it for $1 and had it moved to a prominent place next to Minute Man National Historical Park, the birthplace of American liberty.

- Concord represents, to many people, environmentalism, transcendentalism, scholars, writers, all right here in this magical stew that ends up being these extremely wealthy mansions surrounding this little house.

- [Narrator] It is now an African American and Anti-Slavery Interpretive Center with a mission to tell the truth about the past.

(tense music) A past that was catching up with one of Massachusetts' greatest institutions, Harvard University.

In 2016, after public protest by students, Harvard Law School dropped its coat of arms, which was based on the coat of arms of slave trader Isaac Royall.

Royall had bequeathed much of his fortune to Harvard after his death.

The bequest had established Harvard Law School in the early 1800s.

At least since the 1930s, Harvard Law School's links to Isaac Royall's slavery-tainted fortune had been public knowledge, but now that connection became impossible to ignore.

- It was surprising to see in "The Boston Globe" an article that said, you know, "Who knew that Isaac Royall had any kind of relationship with founding the Harvard Law School?"

And, you know, I sat there at my kitchen table raising my hand saying, "I knew, we knew, we all knew."

And we've told that story here for years.

- [Narrator] Documents revealed that land Isaac Royall bequeathed to Harvard was bought with profits gained from Antigua, a Caribbean slave island where the Royalls had moved in 1700.

- All of Antigua was involved with sugar cultivation and the cultivation of sugar was some of the harshest and most punishing forms of slave labor.

The life expectancy of a person working in the cane fields was five to seven years, but it was cheaper to work these people to death and replace them.

And the punishments were very severe.

If you struck your master, you could lose an extremity, or they could cut your nose off or take your ear.

- [Narrator] Conditions got so bad that they drove some of the enslaved to plot a revolt.

- There was an era of terror all around and there were bands of runaway slaves that did live up in the mountains and in the forests and they could swoop down and, you know, make raids and things.

So it was wartime footing.

- [Narrator] In 1736, rumors of an imminent revolt led Antigua enslavers to take drastic action against those accused of masterminding the plot, including some owned by the Royall family.

- Two of their slaves were implicated in the conspiracy.

One was their slave driver, Hector, and Hector was lost to the executions.

He was burned at the stake and Isaac Royall received 70 pounds compensation for lost property.

(dramatic tense music) When they left in 1737, they were almost fleeing.

- [Narrator] The Royalls returned to Massachusetts, bringing some of their enslaved with them.

The slave trade had made them one of the wealthiest families in Massachusetts.

- A lot of people don't know very well and it blows their mind when they realize that Massachusetts was not only profiting from the slave trade, but there is no slave trade without Massachusetts.

And a lot of people also mention, "Massachusetts was the first to abolish slavery in the country."

That's cool, it was the first to enact slavery in the country, so less cool.

- [Narrator] While more of the history was slowly emerging, high school students made another discovery, an artifact of slavery in their school's front yard.

(eerie music) - My initial reaction was horror.

- My initial reaction was, "The school needs to keep this."

This is their history, and if they're trying to pawn this off on us, I won't allow that.

- [Narrator] The story of the bell began in 2016 around the time when Justin O'Neil-Riley joined Belmont Hill Private School as a scholarship student.

- I was very overwhelmed when I made my first couple of visits.

There were not many people of color on campus, it was just probably about 20 to 30 of us.

- [Narrator] Justin could not fail to miss an old bell on prominent display at the school.

- It was hung up on two stilts, very high, and when you walk by it, you'd always have to look up at it.

- [Narrator] When a course was set up to investigate the bell's providence, Justin joined the class.

The first thing we did was we started inspecting it.

There was a name on there, Jose Giroud, and then on it says Trinidad.

And that's all we had.

So we had to resort to the archives.

- [Narrator] The bell had been gifted in the 1920s by the manager of the Trinidad Sugar Company, which belonged to the co-founders of the school, a locally prominent family.

- Once we had the name, we kind of just started putting the puzzle pieces together.

- Page 97, there we go.

- [Narrator] Belmont Hill history teacher, Juliette Zener, who supervised the investigation was shocked to discover that this humble bell played a pivotal role in managing slavery.

- Bells that were mounted in this particular way were used to call enslaved labor to work.

That finding really was conclusive.

- [Narrator] Justin and his fellow students learned that the bell was used at a Cuban sugar plantation in the 1880s where laborers were still enslaved in all but name.

(soft tense music) - Under the old slave bell, about 1895.

We didn't want it to be biased, we wanted it to be truthful.

I wanted everybody to know like, "Listen, this is a slave bell.

You should feel just as uncomfortable as I do walking past this bell every day."

It being a predominantly white institution, there's never like a second though for most people when it comes to the history of slavery.

It's kinda just like, "Oh, it happened, get over it."

- [Narrator] For four years, the bell remained in place.

Then in 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer sent shock waves across America.

It propelled the recently inaugurated Black Lives Matter movement to the top of the national agenda.

(crowd shouting) - The incident with George Floyd kind of put it into perspective, like, "Why do we still have this on our campus?

If you guys respect us and love us, and you know, we believe that, we feel as if the bell should be removed."

- A board member that knew me well reached out and said, "Our school's discovered that a bell that's been on the campus was a slave bell and the board is voted that they would like to donate it to the Robbins House.

What do you think?

Would you like that bell?"

- I was very much against having the bell placed here.

To me, this home represents freedom from enslavement, it represents what you do when you say, "I'm not doing this anymore."

- [Narrator] Eventually, the bell was moved from the school grounds to Concord.

After much soul-searching, the Robbins House had accepted the gift under one condition, the bell's clapper arm was removed to render it silent.

- So as you can see, we decided to take away its voice and we said, "No, we want to reclaim the story and to reclaim the story, we will make sure that history's not forgotten."

(tense music) - [Narrator] As the Black Lives Matter movement continued to protest against current injustices, yet another historical revelation put Harvard back in the limelight.

In 2021, the university's student newspaper, "The Harvard Crimson," published a 1920s photograph of Harvard's own chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, one of America's most racist and murderous organizations.

- It's pretty explicit.

And there are Black graduates of Harvard who are still alive today who recount this being part of their Harvard experience.

That it wasn't just general discrimination, it wasn't even just generally white supremacy, it was that there was a chapter on campus that explicitly called for their removal and harm to their persons.

- [Narrator] A Harvard graduate aware of her university's racist past is Penny Outlaw.

- My grandmother had gone to Harvard, one of four Black people in the Radcliffe Class of 1927.

No Black students could live on campus.

And there was one incident where she says she saw, she went to a dinner that everybody else went to on campus, but then when her plate was taken away, it was thrown away.

China.

(soft tense music) - [Narrator] In April, 2022, Harvard published its report.

It admitted that 70 enslaved people had worked on its campus and that much of its historic wealth had been provided by rich donors whose fortunes were derived from slavery.

Harvard set aside $100 million for an endowment fund to close the educational, social, and economic gaps that are legacies of slavery and racism.

- Okay, so there was backlash to the report.

It had not gone far enough.

Getting about $100 million as an endowment isn't actually that significant when you consider the amount the university spends on other projects.

- [Narrator] 240 years after Belinda Sutton went to court and was awarded a small pension for her slave labor, 158 years after slavery was abolished, there were now demands for the descendants of enslaved people to be compensated.

- [Crowd] No peace, no basis, no needs, no says, no needs, no justice, no peace, justice right now!

- [Narrator] In December, 2023, a New York State Legislative Committee was announced to consider reparations.

- Let's be clear about what reparations means.

It doesn't mean fixing the past on doing what happened, we can't do that, no one can, but it does mean more than giving people a simple apology 150 years later.

- [Narrator] Harvard's Slavery Report also revealed that one of the men who had donated generously to Harvard was Brister Freeman's enslaver, Dr. John Cumming.

- John Cumming died and he did die without any children, so he had money to give.

He gifted that to Harvard to start a medical school.

And in its recent study, Harvard has named Brister Freeman and his stolen labor as one of the reasons that Harvard has its medical school.

Brister Freeman is finally named as someone who built Harvard.

(soft music) (singer vocalizing) - [Narrator] Brister's wife, Fenda, died of malnutrition in 1811.

He found a new partner to share his life with, a white woman.

They lived out of wedlock.

Interracial marriage would remain illegal in Massachusetts until 1843.

He attracted the ire of Concord's white townsmen, including Brister's occasional employer, slaughterhouse owner, Peter Wheeler.

(bird caws) - [Elise] We know that Brister Freeman worked in the local slaughtering industry because that has been recorded in the archives.

So Brister Freeman shows up one day looking for a day's work to feed himself and his family.

- [Narrator] A local chronicle recorded how Peter Wheeler played a trick on Brister.

- "Mr. Wheeler, having a ferocious bull to kill, and along comes Brister Freeman, the celebrated Negro.

Wheeler told him if he would go into the slaughterhouse and get an ax, he should have a little job to do."

- [Narrator] The chronicle describes how Wheeler enticed Brister into his barn.

(dramatic music) It was a trap.

The bull that Brister was asked to slaughter was on the loose and full of rage.

Brister was in mortal danger.

As the bull charged, he had to use all his strength and skill to slay the ferocious animal.

The man who recorded the story turned it into a cruel joke about skin color.

- "But imagine the amazement of his tormentors when at length he emerged no longer the dim, somber Negro he was when he entered, but literally white with terror."

- Brister, to his credit, used whatever tools that he could to survive.

And he did.

And the joke was, at the end, he had turned white.

Put Peter Wheeler in the same situation and Peter Wheeler would've been translucent.

Yeah, fear can do that, but he survived.

- [Narrator] Instead of awarding Brister compensation for his years of enslavement, Concord's white authorities had taxed him into poverty.

Brister's children left him and Concord behind.

He died alone in 1822, aged 78.

(soft music) (singer vocalizing) Though modest and largely hidden from view, a memorial stone commemorates Brister's life on Brister Hill in Walden Woods.

Today, Brister is more famous than his enslaver, John Cumming.

- Things are changing, you can take a tour of Concord's African American history.

I mean, a lot has happened.

Are we done?

Do we need to do more?

Absolutely.

- Belinda Sutton, she worked on the Royall's plantation in Antigua, and then when they moved back here back to Massachusetts, she was moved also along with 27 other enslaved people.

- My goal is to make sure that every person knows about the Royall House and Slave Quarters.

I want people to understand that we are not only reckoning with the past, but we're also reckoning with the legacies of slavery today.

Slavery is American history.

It's not just Black history, it's American history.

And I think that white people should not only understand their history, they should be accountable for this history as well.

- This is called the lock, and it's what makes the gun fire.

(guns firing) - [Narrator] Today, Concord's history of slavery is a matter of public record.

For Carl Chandler, who was a young man during that 1975 bicentennial celebration, the years since have illuminated truths that needed airing.

- Slavery is in my DNA, slavery is in the DNA of many local people, Concord in particular.

(somber music) I don't expect people to feel ashamed because their ancestor had slaves.

I think it would be a positive, healthy thing for people to acknowledge the history, tell the truth.

I mean, we're this great country, there's nothing that can't be thrown at us in particular with education and news, there's nothing that we couldn't overcome.

(somber music continues)