Walks with Ellen
In honor of Black History Month, join us for #WalksWithEllen. Over the next several weeks, we will be posting from…
Call for Art – Fight for Freedom
This Monday, January 8, is the deadline to submit your proposal for temporary public art in Concord Center. Up to…
The Robbins House Wishes you a Happy and Healthy New Year
The oldest existing mention of slavery in Massachusetts was recorded in 1638, when Africans arrived in the colony on the…
Support The Robbins House this Giving Tuesday
Dear Friends, As a prominent African American historic site, The Robbins House is singularly positioned to foster broader education and…
Support The Robbins House this #GivingTuesday
“For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.” – Amanda Gorman
Prof. Barbara McCaskill’s video summary of the plantation bell
Short video (11:28 mins.) discussion at request Maria Madison, founder and co-president of the Robbins House and Heller School Associate…
A Celebration of Brister Freeman at the Robbins House
Join this marking of the 200th anniversary of Brister Freeman’s Death Maria Madison Welcoming Remarks Keynote Address by Kenneth Reeves…
Robbins House Receives Gift in Memory of Beloved Concord Public Schools Teacher
CONCORD, Ma. (April 27, 2022) – The Robbins House has received a generous gift of $25,000 from Barbara Elliot, beloved…
How a forgotten Black activist fueled a California city’s racial reckoning – Los Angeles Times
Sometimes simple calendar items are the introduction to a really good story. Such was the case of teacher and activist Ellen Garrison Jackson Clark and a small notice about the Altadena Historical Society’s Juneteenth celebration of her courageous but little-known life.
![Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? We have you covered with a little Robbins house trivia. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a poem entitled Peter’s Field. Peter’s Field most likely referenced Peter Hutchinson, who was the last African American owner of The Robbins House. Peter purchased the home in 1852 and lived with his wife, Nancy, and several of their children in the home until 1868. Emerson described Peter’s farm, and by extension the original area of farmland attached to The Robbins House out in the Great Field like this:
KNOWS he who tills this lonely field
To reap its scanty corn,
What mystic fruit his acres yield
At midnight and at morn?]
That field by spirits bad and good,
By Hell and Heaven is haunted,
And every rood in the hemlock wood
I know is ground enchanted.
[In the long sunny afternoon
The plain was full of ghosts:
I wandered up,
I wandered down,
Beset by pensive hosts.
For in those lonely grounds the sun
Shines not as on the town,
In nearer arcs his journeys run,
And nearer stoops the moon.
There in a moment I have seen
The buried Past arise;
The fields of Thessaly grew green,
Old gods forsook the skies.
Happy Reading!](https://robbinshouse.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)