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The Black Heritage Trail: A walking tour deep into Boston history
The trail leads visitors through Beacon Hill and offers a glimpse of the 19th-century Black experience.
By Danielle Legros GeorgesUpdated April 30, 2021, 8:17 a.m.
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Massachusetts 54th Regiment reenactors in front of the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial in 2018.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff/File
A WARM WIND WHIPS around the Massachusetts State House, blowing a newspaper page down Beacon Street, westward toward the shops on Charles. The magnificent glowing dome, gilded in 23-karat gold, seems equal to the sun. Beneath it, the solemn affairs of state are taking place.
John Wieners photographed in Detroit, Mich., in 1966. (Photo by Leni Sinclair / Getty Images)
During the last three decades of his life, the poet John Wieners lived in a one-bedroom walkup at 44 Joy Street, on the back side of Boston’s Beacon Hill. By some accounts it was a drab, minimalist apartment, furnished with wicker patio chairs and decorated with Wieners’s own collages of travel brochures and movie magazines. The refrigerator was empty and unplugged. After he won a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1986, grocery bags of champagne lined the walls replaced, gradually, by the empty bottles.