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Arboretum road renamed after enslaved woman in ceremony at intersection with street that remains named after a slaveholder

New Flora Way sign

New Flora Way sign at intersection with Walter Street.

Roslindale and Jamaica Plain residents gathered with city and Harvard officials yesterday to dedicate the new name of the street that bisects the Arnold Arboretum, in honor of an enslaved woman who lived nearby.

Residents in both neighborhoods had worked for two years to get the street renamed because while Bussey - whose land holdings became the core of the arboretum - was not himself a slaveholder, he became rich through his role as a shipping magnate who transported goods made by enslaved people to England, in particular, cotton, sugar and tobacco.

The name change was formally approved by the landowners along the road - Harvard and the city Parks Department - which the Public Improvements Commission requires before it changes a Boston street's name. Although the commission formally approved the change a couple weeks ago, at least as of this morning, Google Maps has yet to make the change.

Speakers, including Mayor Wu, and Laurie Jo Wallace, who was part of the citizen group that worked for the change, said the name change is a recognition that there is more to Boston history than what most people learn in school about the Revolution. The change is "a recognition of how much of Boston history has not been told," Wu said.

And, Wu and others said, the fact that we know almost nothing about Flora, her family, her friends, her life, is itself important, because it shows how much further we still have to go in coming to terms with our history. In fact, about all we know about her is that she was listed as property on a probate accounting of property owned by William Dudley after he died in 1743.

George Wardle, of the Roslindale Historical Society, said the name change does not detract from the good that Bussey did with his wealth. He was one of Harvard's largest benefactors and left the land for what became the Arboretum. Wardle noted that Bussey Brook and Bussey Hill, both in the Arboretum, will continue to be named after him, as will the Bussey Bridge nearby at South Street and Archdale Road.

"He was generous, but also part of a troubling economic system," Wardle said.

Wayne Tucker, creator of the Eleven Names project to chronicle the lives of Black and indigenous Massachusetts residents when slavery was legal, said Massachusetts was the first colony to legally adopt slavery, in 1638, and that at one point, the colony had 1,000 enslaved people. Slavery remained legal here even after the Revolution - until the Supreme Judicial Court outlawed it in 1783.

"Flora did not live to see 1783," Tucker said.

The renaming ceremony was held at the Arboretum's Walter gate, at Walter Street, where a new Flora Way sign was formally uncovered at the corner of what used to be Bussey Street.

Tucker noted that while Bussey himself did not own slaves, the Rev. Nathaniel Walter, for whom Walter Street was named, owned several slaves.

One of the possible names the working group considered for the road was Cuffe, for one of Walter's slaves, who may have lived with him in his parsonage, located about where the Green T coffee shop is now, at Walter and South streets. Some might even be buried in the small colonial and Revolutionary cemetery that still sits within the Arboretum grounds off Walter Street, he said.

There hasn't been an effort to rename a street named for an actual slave owner, however.

Renaming Bussey Street was relatively easy because the city Public Improvements Commission requires unanimous consent of property owners to rename a street and Bussey only had two - the city Parks Department and Harvard, both of whom agreed to the change. In contrast, Walter is a much longer street, running from South Street near Fallon Field to the VFW Parkway, with dozens of homes - and a senior-care facility - all of whose owners would have to consent.

City Councilor Enrique Pepén (Roslindale, Hyde Park, Mattapan) and Arboretum Director Ned Friedman, both said the new Flora Way will also be a symbol of the Arboretum being further opened to the public - most of the grounds are owned by the city, but leased to Harvard, at least for the next roughly 850 years.

Pepén, who grew up near the Archdale development off Washington Street, basically a couple blocks from the Arboretum, said that as a boy neither he nor his friends ever visited it. "We didn't know the Arboretum was possible for us," he said.

But now, the Arboretum is working on re-building entrances and an entire new pathway from Roslindale Square to Forest Hills to make the place more welcoming. Friedman, who noted current gates can be foreboding, said he just recently finished fundraising for an all new entrance to the Arboretum on Washington Street across from the Forest Hills T station.

Wardle will lead a discussion about Flor and other people enslaved in the area in colonial times at the Roslindale BPL branch, at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 21.
Some speakers also said the re-naming is part of an effort to open the Arboretum to people who may not have felt welcome in the past.

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Comments

And Boston lived happily and in harmony ever after. I'll wager there's quite a few Bostonians of noncolor that will sleep soundly tonight knowing they did "the right thing". Too bad rewriting history doesn't change it.

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Nobody's rewriting history here. Ol' Man Bussey is still memorialized with a hill, a brook, a meadow and the scene of one of the deadliest train crashes in American history.

Instead, we now have a road name that introduces us to a part of Boston history most people never knew about (it hit me when I got home that, yay, they renamed one road, but Jesus, the bigger, longer road it connects to is still named for an actual slave owner, as you might be able to tell from my headline).

But do go ahead, tell us how this changes your perceptions of Bussey. In fact, tell us what you even knew about Bussey to begin with.

Were you also upset when Gov. Baker ordered the memorial for Confederate soldiers removed from Georges Island?

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Adam be aware that your profane use of the Lords name is quite offensive too many of your readers.

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"..quite offensive to James Roddy...and I'm not weird at all so..."

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How many do you speak for?

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You might want to check that term out.

See also "neopharisee".

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Given that we have at least four of them, that ought to be quite an undertaking.

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Local Black communities have been suggesting changing it to Booker T. Washington for years, like how King County where Seattle is officially changed theirs to ML King County (was originally named for some other problematic King).

...find Booker T. Washington problematic.

We need to stop this revisionist madness and historical disappearing, or name/rename everything without proper names, just numbers, letters, colors, plants, animals, purely abstract terms, etc.

We need to stop this revisionist madness and historical disappearing

The idea that renaming a street is either "revisionist madness" or "historical disappearing" is, of course, complete nonsense. If a previous understanding of history is incorrect, then revising that understanding is sanity, not madness. As for "historical disappearing", that seems like a fair description of the process of pretending that enslaved people were happy and that enslavers earned their wealth honestly.

But what I really want to know, is why does this hurt you so? Infants bellow when their routines are disrupted, but adults are more flexible than that, or they ought to be.

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When a city changes a street name, what's the process? Do they send everyone on the block a letter effectively telling them they've moved? How long does the USPS keep delivering to the old name?

If one person in 50 residents objects, that would be enough to stop the process?

I'm not critical of the change here and the only two groups that would matter don't use it as a primary address. Still curious about other times a street is renamed.

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If you lived in that street and you sold your house the deed would simply say blahblahblah Street (formerly known as blahblahblah Street,), when recording the street address. That's if it's recorded land. God help u if it's registered land, because the Land Court makes decisions based on who you get at the recording counter or e-filing queue. Any title agents want to chime in?

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As we dig out the roots of history we sow a perilous future.

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Plenty of things will still be named after Bussey. They made a deliberate decision to rename only this road, not the brook or the hill.

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Domino theory: Let’s not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Conflating two unrelated but equally meaningless and misunderstood sayings in one sentence. Well struck, sir.

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Nobody is erasing history - people are just adding some actual history to the sanitized mythology known as "Celebrate only white colonists and forget who they killed and who did a lot of the actual work".

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Yeah. I get that. I worry it’s more about absolving white guilt and is more patronizing rather than actually a recognition. Also, the name flys under the radar- Flora seems like it’s related to the Arboretum, but then again that’s powerful and historically symbolic in its own way.

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People will take away what meaning they wish: that's on them, and not something you or anyone else can control.

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Never trust a fart

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when the road was named after him and I still don't know much about him after.

What history is being "dug out" here? By naming the road after an enslaved person, we certainly won't be forgetting the history of those who traded in the goods produced by enslaved people in this country, like Bussey did.

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Submitted the name change to Google Maps. It's pending review.

However the editor who is watching me right now is a complete twat when it comes to also fixing the "Bussey Street Gate" marker which is for some reason stupidly categorized as an "educational center" that I've tried to close/remove/rename to no avail. All of those edits have been denied...so I guess we'll just have to start with getting the street fixed first, then we can focus on the gate being completely incorrect.

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Yeah, not sure whats up with that, even as a level 6 local guide its auto denied...

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Supposedly Boston changes their GIS data/source of truth and that syncs with Google and other map services on a regular basis. Given that, I am surprised google still isn't updated (10/29), given the Bill Russell bridge name was on Google maps the next day.

It is now known as Flora Way on Google Maps.