Advocates, HDC strike deal on smaller Black Heritage Trail Markers
Reaching an accord took new rounds of pointed, and at times personal, debate.
Town regulators and project supporters have compromised on proposed signs detailing Acton’s Black history, settling on markers about 20% smaller than advocates had preferred.
A $14,000 state grant could also be back in play.
Getting to that accord took new rounds of pointed, and at times personal, debate.
“My history deserves to stand out,” Black Heritage Trail Marker supporter Nikki Turpin told the Historic Districts Commission on July 8.
Trail marker organizers want to install informational signs marking spots including a house where Harriet Tubman dined and a church where Frederick Douglass once spoke.
HDC has jurisdiction over some of Acton’s most historic areas and has been at loggerheads with advocates over marker dimensions.
Advocates had asked for 18-by-60-inch signs. HDC members favored markers as small as 12 by 40 inches. HDC ultimately voted 3-2 for 16-by-53.3-inch markers, with Chair Kate Chartener and panel member Walter Clay voting no.
Commissioners have insisted they supported the mission but worried that large boards would disrupt places like Monument Square.
Chartener told The Acton Bridge her group has faced “a lot of vilification.”
Michael Williams, the only Black member of the School Committee, says the debate has hit him personally. He teared up and hugged fellow project supporters after a new site visit to showcase sample signs.
Getting ‘a reputation’
Resident Tooey Rogers warned the town may be getting “a reputation” after a federal antisemitism investigation and School Committee reticence about naming the new Acton Middle School for abolitionist Ellen Garrison.
Sign supporters say trail markers could help to welcome Black visitors in an underrepresented community.
“The reason why we cannot be bigger than Colonial Williamsburg, the reason why we can’t even get Black people to come in like the Berkshires, is sitting in this group, on this committee,” Turpin told the HDC. “It’s the fear of doing the thing [and] using your voice and your whiteness for good.”
Turpin said she was “heartbroken” to hear a predominantly white panel “say that my history should be smaller.”
Clay said he felt he was “being set up as the bad guy” in a meeting in which he reiterated concerns about setting a precedent and pressed Economic Vitality Manager Mimi Graney on how long the signs would stay in place.
Acton has fought about other signs in recent years. Rather than focus on this proposal, Clay said, the town could have established a “signage standard.”
“If you feel like a bad guy,” Turpin said, “I ask you to sit in that uncomfortable feeling and actually examine what you can do to not be the bad guy.”
Intentional or not, she said, the markers discourse was sending a message to people, including students in the METCO integration program between Boston and Acton.
They’re hearing “you’re good enough to come to our school, but we want you to leave,” she said, and “anything that represents you will not be allowed to be in this space.”
‘We move slowly’
Select Board members last month called for a marker compromise. Chartener said HDC was open to a deal and had already budged on allowing signs with pictures in historic districts.
“We move slowly,” she said. “We’re a conservative body. Sorry.”
The deliberation has jeopardized a $14,000 state grant covering half the project cost that was due to expire at the end of June. Graney told The Bridge last week that the grant administrator recently said Acton could get an extension.
Federal American Rescue Plan Act cash that the town plans to tap for the rest of the budget expires at the end of this calendar year.
Because the project is weather sensitive, Graney said, officials would have to finish installing the signs this fall — before the ground freezes.
Although the signs have cleared their biggest hurdle yet, they still need several other municipal approvals.
“There’s many cooks in this broth,” Graney said.
