On a recent Saturday, two Freedom Trail Foundation guides, dressed in androgynous 18th-century garb, recounted the story of Jemima Wilkinson. She was a Rhode Island–born preacher who, after a grave illness in 1776, transitioned into a genderless evangelist known as the Public Universal Friend.
Across town, a tour launched in May that invites visitors into the Old South Meeting House to reflect on the building’s original seating arrangements, where poor and enslaved people were relegated to the upper gallery.
And Boston History Company’s daily Freedom Trail tours now begin at the Embrace monument on Boston Common, highlighting the lives of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. and the city’s civil rights legacy.
Despite the nationwide political and cultural campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion, the stories being told along Boston’s Freedom Trail are more diverse than ever.
In March, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing federally controlled historic sites to present what he called “patriotic” history. He denounced efforts to highlight the country’s legacy of slavery and oppression as a “revisionist movement” that “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
But most of the sites along the Freedom Trail are not federally controlled. And the private Boston companies that run the tours say they have a very different view of how history should be told.
Hub Town Tours, which is partnering with Revolutionary Spaces on the new tour that includes the inside of the Old South Meeting House is trying to tell a more layered and complex history.
”It’s certainly far more interesting than a simplified, mythologized version of American history,” said Maureen McAleer, Hub Town’s operations director. “I think you talk to anybody in our company, anybody who’s working around the city, and we consider that our patriotic duty.”
The story of the Public Universal Friend is part of the Rainbow Revolutionaries tour. Now in its second summer, the tour amplifies the stories of figures in Boston who were LGBTQ+, or are understood by modern society to have fallen under that umbrella.
“We want to honor the fact that queer people did exist in the 18th century, absolutely,” said Catherine Benjamin, who led the research for the Rainbow Revolutionaries tour and manages programs at the Freedom Trail Foundation. Due to the stigma at the time, there is very little specific documentation of people in lesbian or gay relationships. Still, Benjamin said her team is determined to “bring them out of invisibility.”
Kelly Leonard, chief operating officer at Boston History Company, said her company doesn’t want to be limited to “the history of wealthy white men in Boston.” Their guides include current research as much as possible, she said.
“We do want them to be talking about Black history and Indigenous history and women’s history while they’re out here on the Freedom Trail,” she said, so that guests of diverse backgrounds can “see themselves” in the tours.
Revolutionary Spaces hosts a tour called “Slavery & Resistance in Colonial Massachusetts” focusing on the lives of enslaved people and the Black voices for abolition.
“It’s part of America’s history, and it’s difficult to understand the way America and Massachusetts and Boston were established as historically significant places without giving it the context of what Black people and women and other immigrant groups contributed to that process,” said Matthew Wilding, the senior director of interpretation for Old South and the Old State House.
That tour has been so popular that the organization is scheduling additional sessions this summer.
But not everyone is enthusiastic about the telling of the complicated parts of American history. As the federal government has vowed to eliminate DEI programs, local tour guides are getting more pushback from guests.
“It’s happening now more than ever,” said Hub Town’s Leah Sause. “In the last six months, we’ve had to have multiple conversations of what happens when guests feel emboldened [to object to the content], because they do.”
Several guides told GBH said some guests have accused them of telling “woke” history or providing background that “is not the way [they] learned it.”
Particularly for female tour guides, Sause said, there is a concern about physical confrontation. “There have been multiple of our guides who have had physical encounters — not violent, but situations where we definitely did not feel safe.”
Several tour companies told GBH News that they have been boosting training for guides about personal safety and how to respond to confrontational guests. The Rainbow Revolutionaries tour is led by two guides instead of one, in part because of concerns about safety.
The objectors, the tour companies say, are still a tiny minority of the guests they serve each year. But the increased pushback in recent months underscores the importance of telling these stories.
"Queer history is part of Boston’s history. Black history is a part of Boston’s history. And trans history is also part of Boston history."Catherine Benjamin
“We’re here to tell Boston’s history,” said the Freedom Trail Foundation’s Benjamin. “Queer history is part of Boston’s history. Black history is a part of Boston’s history. And trans history is also part of Boston history. So we’re going to tell those stories to people so that they don’t get erased.”
Ryan Dunn of Medford joined the Rainbow Revolutionaries Tour with his partner Jabari Coy-Gooding, and said he had never seen queer stories represented in Boston’s history before.
Coy-Gooding said it was a reminder to embrace your identity.
“It’s always important to be visible,” he said. “It’s always important to have your voice heard. It is always important to not suppress your present day self because that will one day be history.”
