Hari Jones Do You Know Lewis Hayden

Category: History


Lewis Hayden (December 2, 1811 – April 7, 1889) was an African-American leader who escaped with his family from slavery in Kentucky; they moved to Boston, where he became an abolitionist and lecturer, businessman, and politician. Before the American Civil War, he and his wife Harriet Hayden aided numerous fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad, often sheltering them at their house.

He was elected in 1873 as a Republican representative from Boston to the Massachusetts state legislature. He helped found numerous black lodges of Freemasons. The Lewis and Harriet Hayden House has been designated a National Historic Site on the Black Heritage Trail in Boston

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