‘A long process’: Trail markers weeks away from installation
Reaching an accord took new rounds of pointed, and at times personal, debate.
Black Heritage Trail Marker supporters are counting down the days until they dedicate their much-discussed testaments to Acton’s past.
After a bruising approval process, a larger debate about race, bias, and historic preservation still simmers.
“It’s head-shaking,” trail marker supporter Joe Zellner told The Acton Bridge. “I thought we were beyond this.”
Organizers scaled down their signs to win Historic District Commission support. They also scrapped one of 11 proposed locations this month after Cemetery Commission members rebuffed their request to place it in Old Hill Burying Ground.
Amid criticism, HDC Chair Kate Chartener is coming to her panel’s defense.
“It’s been a long process,” Town Manager Kerry Lafleur said of the trail marker effort, “but I think it will be great.”
Trail plans
The Heritage Trail aims to educate residents and visitors about Black history. Organizers also say the signs will send a welcoming message to people who see their backgrounds recognized.
Historic preservation advocates pushed back this summer, worried that prominent markers would seem out of place, especially in Acton Center.
The Select Board approved most of the sign locations last month.
Two remaining signs with information about Black Concordians’ graves at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and Old Hill went before the Cemetery Commission on September 2.
Members raised concerns about inadvertently placing a sign on top of an unmarked grave and suggested moving installations outside the cemeteries.
Organizers settled for a relocated Sleepy Hollow marker. The Old Hill sign “currently has no home,” Joe Palumbo, a project co-lead, told The Bridge.
At press time, supporters were still awaiting HDC approval for a sign in Monument Square marking speeches Frederick Douglass delivered in town.
With the other nine markers approved, organizers are planning a dedication event on October 22.
HDC defense
This summer’s meeting marathon was personal for some Concordians of color.
“It shouldn’t need to be [this] hard,” School Committee member and marker supporter Michael Williams told The Bridge.
Chartener and HDC colleagues have emphasized that it was the size of the markers, not their messages, that concerned them.
After an unrelated court ruling slammed the HDC for acting in “bad faith” on another project, Chartener implored fellow committee leaders on September 16 to “look around Monument Square and appreciate the contributions that people have made to the HDC.”
Acton’s Colonial Inn would soon be full of people eating lunch on its porches, she said during the town’s monthly Chairs Breakfast. “They wouldn’t be there if there were a big TJ Maxx right across the street.”
New committee
This year’s trail marker fireworks followed Acton’s impassioned debate about naming the new Acton Middle School after Black educator Ellen Garrison. The town previously navigated controversy over a set of historic markers deemed inaccurate and offensive to Indigenous people.
The Select Board is now planning a task force in response to contrasting proposals for new memorials in Monument Square.
One vision emphasizes “the ongoing struggle for societal justice and individual freedom” with signs and a pocket park. The other would list the names of Acton residents who died during the Revolution on a traditional plaque.
The board discussed duties for the proposed Revolutionary War Memorial Task Force on September 14 but has yet to formally create the committee.
Zellner, a former Acton-Carlisle High School teacher who currently works as a Robbins House museum interpreter, has been reflecting on the string of public debates. He supported naming the middle school for Garrison and is glad the trail markers will be going up.
As conversations about recognizing people from Acton’s history remain tense, “What’s the problem?” Zellner asks. “Ultimately, it’s because they’re Black. That is the unspoken elephant in the room.”
