Arboretum road renamed after enslaved woman in ceremony at intersection with street that remains named after a slaveholder

Roslindale and Jamaica Plain residents gathered with city and Harvard officials yesterday to dedicate the new name of the street that bisects the Arnold Arboretum, in honor of an enslaved woman who lived nearby.

Residents in both neighborhoods had worked for two years to get the street renamed because while Bussey - whose land holdings became the core of the arboretum - was not himself a slaveholder, he became rich through his role as a shipping magnate who transported goods made by enslaved people to England, in particular, cotton, sugar and tobacco.

The name change was formally approved by the landowners along the road - Harvard and the city Parks Department - which the Public Improvements Commission requires before it changes a Boston street's name. Although the commission formally approved the change a couple weeks ago, at least as of this morning, Google Maps has yet to make the change.

Speakers, including Mayor Wu, and Laurie Jo Wallace, who was part of the citizen group that worked for the change, said the name change is a recognition that there is more to Boston history than what most people learn in school about the Revolution. The change is "a recognition of how much of Boston history has not been told," Wu said.

And, Wu and others said, the fact that we know almost nothing about Flora, her family, her friends, her life, is itself important, because it shows how much further we still have to go in coming to terms with our history. In fact, about all we know about her is that she was listed as property on a probate accounting of property owned by William Dudley after he died in 1743.

George Wardle, of the Roslindale Historical Society, said the name change does not detract from the good that Bussey did with his wealth. He was one of Harvard's largest benefactors and left the land for what became the Arboretum. Wardle noted that Bussey Brook and Bussey Hill, both in the Arboretum, will continue to be named after him, as will the Bussey Bridge nearby at South Street and Archdale Road.

"He was generous, but also part of a troubling economic system," Wardle said.

Wayne Tucker, creator of the Eleven Names project to chronicle the lives of Black and indigenous Massachusetts residents when slavery was legal, said Massachusetts was the first colony to legally adopt slavery, in 1638, and that at one point, the colony had 1,000 enslaved people. Slavery remained legal here even after the Revolution - until the Supreme Judicial Court outlawed it in 1783.

"Flora did not live to see 1783," Tucker said.

The renaming ceremony was held at the Arboretum's Walter gate, at Walter Street, where a new Flora Way sign was formally uncovered at the corner of what used to be Bussey Street.

Tucker noted that while Bussey himself did not own slaves, the Rev. Nathaniel Walter, for whom Walter Street was named, owned several slaves.

One of the possible names the working group considered for the road was Cuffe, for one of Walter's slaves, who may have lived with him in his parsonage, located about where the Green T coffee shop is now, at Walter and South streets. Some might even be buried in the small colonial and Revolutionary cemetery that still sits within the Arboretum grounds off Walter Street, he said.

There hasn't been an effort to rename a street named for an actual slave owner, however.

Renaming Bussey Street was relatively easy because the city Public Improvements Commission requires unanimous consent of property owners to rename a street and Bussey only had two - the city Parks Department and Harvard, both of whom agreed to the change. In contrast, Walter is a much longer street, running from South Street near Fallon Field to the VFW Parkway, with dozens of homes - and a senior-care facility - all of whose owners would have to consent.

City Councilor Enrique Pepén (Roslindale, Hyde Park, Mattapan) and Arboretum Director Ned Friedman, both said the new Flora Way will also be a symbol of the Arboretum being further opened to the public - most of the grounds are owned by the city, but leased to Harvard, at least for the next roughly 850 years.

Pepén, who grew up near the Archdale development off Washington Street, basically a couple blocks from the Arboretum, said that as a boy neither he nor his friends ever visited it. "We didn't know the Arboretum was possible for us," he said.

But now, the Arboretum is working on re-building entrances and an entire new pathway from Roslindale Square to Forest Hills to make the place more welcoming. Friedman, who noted current gates can be foreboding, said he just recently finished fundraising for an all new entrance to the Arboretum on Washington Street across from the Forest Hills T station.

Wardle will lead a discussion about Flor and other people enslaved in the area in colonial times at the Roslindale BPL branch, at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 21.
Some speakers also said the re-naming is part of an effort to open the Arboretum to people who may not have felt welcome in the past.