A cross-collection finding aid from the Framingham History Center that seeks to assist the public in learning more about Black and Indigenous persons who lived and labored in the area in varying states of freedom/unfreedom.

"Phebey, who was just two years old at the time of sale, was sold to the Widow Balch for 1 pound, 6 shillings, and 8 pence, the modern equivalent of roughly $370. This document forces us to face the ways in which the white people of Framingham owed their success to the subjugation and dehumanization of people of African descent, and to consider the echoes of this practice that still exist today." The image (transcript available) is a bill of sale from the Framingham History Center's 'Framingham's Top Ten' online exhibit.

Crispus Attucks, born an enslaved male of Black and Indigenous descent, holds the distinction of being the first person to die in the Boston Massacre. However, prior to that, in his late 20s, he escaped from his servitude under Framingham's Wiilliam Brown. Attucks then worked as a sailor for about 20 years, before fatefully ending up as part of the angry mob in Boston on March 5th, 1770 and being shot by British soldiers, dying instantly - the first martyr of the American Revolution was ironically, technically still a 'fugitive slave'. From the Framingham History Center online 'Framingham Biography' collection.

"Meta Warrick Fuller (1877 – 1968) is an important figure for a wide array of people. As a female artist of color, she broke down gender and racial barriers despite adversity and discrimination." From the Framingham History Center online 'Framingham Biographies' exhibit