Around New England

Liberal Boston Globe Columnist Argues Against Renaming Faneuil Hall

November 12, 2018

Left-wing activists who want Faneuil Hall in Boston renamed because its donor and namesake was a slave trader in the 1700s staged a reenactment of a slave auction Saturday outside the building known as the Cradle of Liberty.

Adrian Walker, who is black, argues in The Boston Globe that the slave auction was counterproductive.

“I missed the slave auction quite deliberately. The thought of seeing the nadir of human misery — my ancestors’ misery — reduced to a political strategy didn’t sit well with me. I understand that making people uncomfortable was the point, but I don’t need to see a grade-school production of a slave auction to grasp its horror,” Walker writes.

Changing the name of one of Boston’s most famous landmarks won’t improve anybody’s life, he says.

“Renaming Faneuil Hall will not save us. Only a rededication to justice in the here and now can accomplish that,” Walker writes.

Efforts to rename Faneuil Hall was also the subject of a column in New Boston Post in August 2017.