Located just outside Boston, in what is now the city of Medford, the Isaac Royall House and Slave Quarters remains one of Massachusetts' last freestanding remnants of America's grim history, but before it was a museum and historical landmark, it was a home belonging to the wealthy, Royall family of New England.
Isaac Royall Sr. (1672-1739), a successful merchant who amassed great wealth through the triangular trade of rum, enslaved people, and sugar cane enterprise in Antigua returned to his New England hometown and settled into a grand, three-story Georgian mansion. From 1737 to 1781, the Royalls enslaved over 60 Black men, women and children to tend to their 504 acre estate of vast farm land adorned with pristinely manicured lawns and farm animals for breeding.
Only 35 feet from the southwest corner of the grandiose manor, the enslaved people worked and slept in a quaint brick and clapboard "out kitchen," a space intended to prevent the main estate from overheating during warmer months. After construction, the space was doubled in size, attaching a workshop, buttery, and upstairs room.
Kyera Singleton, executive director of the museum, public history scholar and advocate for race and gender equality, lauds the organization on their attempts to undo years of suppression by restoring the space to its historical condition, candid and compassionate narration and overall efforts on preserving history.
"My job at the museum is to not only tell the story of the Royalls," said Singleton. "But to also privilege the stories of the lives of the Black women, men and children that the Royall family enslaved."
With collaborations with Harvard University and various history foundations, the non-profit museum dedicates itself to recovering and passing on these unequivocal truths about wealth, bondage, and most importantly, Black resistance.
"Our responsibility is to tell this truth," said Singleton. "It is our responsibility to highlight all the different, amazing people that have fought for all of us to literally be here today -- that have made all these types of contributions to society so that we can be in this moment."
With emphasis on these frameworks, the Royall House and Slave Quarters underscores the methods of resistance by the enslaved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the legacy of slavery on today's institutions and activism, leaving visitors with fresh yet "challenging" perspectives.
The preservation of Royall House is more than historical upkeep, according to Kyera Singleton, it is an act of defiance against forgetting. But, beyond Medford, the nation engages in an internal battle of its own historical narrative. The debate over what gets told -- who gets to tell and how -- has demanded action from our most esteemed historical institutions and museums.
In an attempt to "restore truth and sanity to American history," President Donald Trump has targeted The Smithsonian Institution and The National Museum of African American History and Culture for their "divisive" and "woke" approaches to the retelling of slavery in America. But, historians, educators and concerned citizens argue that these institutions serve significant roles in understanding our democracy.
"Our national museums tell true and fascinating stories about our nation's past. We need to acknowledge all parts of that history, including our virtues and our failures, and everything in between. From its beginning, the Smithsonian Institution has been well positioned with brilliant curators, historians, librarians, and staff to do this deep historical work and reflection and to do it well," says Professor Kabria Baumgartner, associate director of public history and associate professor of Africana studies at Northeastern University. "This is our cultural crown jewel."
Still, not everyone agrees that landmarks like the Royall House and Slave Quarters are the best way of retelling history, arguing that they anchor us to the darkest parts of our past. But, as Baumgartner asserts, "we can both preserve the past and know this history, and move toward reconciliation," adding that " knowing the history of slavery, specifically the human toll, does not mean we are stuck in the past, as some people might argue. It means we are empowered, with this history as part of our collective knowledge and strength."
Whether it be the restoration of historical landmarks and retellings in academic institutions or the removal of sites and alternative interpretations, the debate over how American history is told and by whom continues. But, as Singleton reminds us, these conversations extend beyond just history, but continuity.
"If we want to understand the history of America, we have to understand the history of slavery."