Historic Site Events

The acclaimed artist Roberto Mighty is premiering a groundbreaking public art project at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground: We Were Here Too. This ambitious project, produced in partnership with the Freedom Trail® Foundation and Old North Illuminated, revives the memory of Boston’s colonial African Americans, many of whom lived and worked in what is today’s North End. The project can be experienced worldwide via an online multimedia website, and locally via augmented reality at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground.

Please join us for an artist talk on Wednesday, May 28, 2025 at 5:30pm at Old North Church. This event is free, but accommodations are limited, so please RSVP. Light refreshments will be provided. This project is funded by the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture’s Un-Monument Initiative and The Mellon Foundation.

We Were Here Too honors historical figures, including Phillis Wheatley Peters, the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry; Prince Hall, an abolitionist who fought in the Revolutionary War and founded Prince Hall Masonry; and Onesimus, an African who was instrumental in bringing knowledge of smallpox inoculation to America.

Blending history with technology, We Were Here Too invites the public to engage with a layered storytelling experience. The project features augmented reality, video interviews with historians and community voices, digital illustrations, archival images, voice performances, and historical content drawn from museum collections and archives around the world.

Roberto says, “I hope folks will experience this exhibit and learn that African Americans – free and enslaved – were living and working in Boston at the same time as Paul Revere, Abigail Adams and John Hancock. We were here, too.”

Funded by the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture through a grant from the Mellon Foundation, We Were Here Too is presented in partnership with the Boston Parks and Recreation Department, The Historic Burying Grounds Initiative, the Freedom Trail® Foundation, and Old North Illuminated.

A paint restoration project is currently underway at Old North to remove layers of white overpaint and reveal some of the church’s colonial-era artwork! Expert craftspeople are uncovering 16 angels in the balcony arches that were painted in the late 1720s and 1730s by congregation member John Gibbs. Visitors to Old North will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the conservation team in action and see long-hidden history being revealed.