African Meeting House

Inside the 219-year-old African Meeting House, where Frederick Douglass once thundered against slavery and Black families built their own schools as acts of defiance, community leaders gathered this week to warn against what they call an effort to erase America’s full history.

I have always been curious about African American history because when I was growing up, the inquisitive kid that I was, there was no mention in my textbooks that we as a people individually or collectively contributed to anything.

When Regie Gibson looks back on the history of the United States, he can’t help but notice the integral role music played at every turn. Music, he said, has always been an “embodied expression of the spirit of what was in the hearts of people.”

A trio of talented musicians with Boston and Berklee College of Music roots bring a reimagined arrangement of African American spirituals to the African Meeting House on Dec. 1. Danny Rivera, Gavin Rushing and Matt Savage created the concert “Songs of Free Men” to celebrate the rich history of Black music and to unite everyone still searching for freedom.