A handful of Harvard undergraduates gathered recently before a plain white sign.
“This is one of the most important panels in the museum,” Kyera Singleton, executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford, told the group.
Two students leaned in closer, squinting over rows of type. Nan. Ruth. House Peter. Forten Howard. Cuff …
“These are the Black women, men, and children who we know were enslaved by the Royalls over a 40-year period,” Singleton explained. “You can Google any member of the Royall family and find all you need to know about them. However, we cannot do the same thing with the enslaved people on this plantation.”
At least 60 people were enslaved at this site a few miles north of Harvard’s Cambridge campus, making the property’s 18th-century owners the largest slaveholding family in all of Massachusetts. Singleton, hired in 2020, makes it her mission to remember the lives represented by that sign. “We’re doing this work to make sure we know their names, and we say their names as much as if not more than the Royalls’,” she said in an interview.
Harvard Law School pledged $500,000 this year in support of the Royall House and Slave Quarters’ mission. Also announced was a University-wide commitment to working closer with the museum on research and learning experiences. Community partnerships are central to Harvard’s educational mission, said Social Science Dean Lawrence D. Bobo, who is also the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences. “...
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