Where to Explore Black and Indigenous History Across the 13 Original Colonies

In Massachusetts, Black and Indigenous history converges in one person, Crispus Attucks, the first person killed in the Boston Massacre. Attucks, a slavery escapee and merchant seaman, was of Black and Wampanoag descent.

In the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston, walk the 1.6-mile Black Heritage Trail to explore the community’s abolitionist history in the 1800s and Underground Railroad history. The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head called Martha’s Vineyard home. A historically sacred place, Aquinnah Cliffs is a scenic red-clay overlook overlooking part of the Wampanoag reservation on the Southwestern tip of the island.

For over a century, Oak Bluffs has been a haven for Black people, serving as an Underground Railroad stop, a gathering spot, and a summer paradise. Connect with Black Massachusetts culture on the African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard, which comprises 33 historically significant sites, including sites that highlight how the Wampanoag risked their lives to defy the Fugitive Slave Act on the Vineyard, helping to hide enslaved Africans seeking freedom.

The Tanataquidgeon is the oldest Indigenous-owned and operated museum in the U.S. With tours conducted by Mohegan Tribal members, it is one of the richest places to learn about the region’s Mohegan people from their own perspectives.

In 1839, the enslaved Africans aboard the Amistad revolted, seized the ship, and ordered the colonists to steer back toward Africa. Colonists secretly changed course, and the Amistad anchored in Long Island, New York, before captives were taken to Connecticut and imprisoned. This important piece of Black history is kept alive at the Amistad Center for Art & Culture in Hartford, where it is part of over 130 sites on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

When it comes to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the assumption is that most enslaved Africans were taken to the South. What many don’t realize is that the U.S.’s smallest state, Rhode Island,  was once the largest slave trade port in North America. Today, centuries of Black history are preserved at God’s Little Acra, a burial ground in Newport where thousands rest at the largest intact Colonial-era Black burial ground in the U.S. Travelers can walk through history on the Newport Black History Walking Tours held weekly from May through October.

Rhode Island’s original people, the Narragansett, have called the land home for over 30,000 years. The state’s only Indigenous-run museum, Tomaquag Museum, preserves the tribe’s rich history.

The original name for the NYC area is Lenapehoking, and Indigenous history runs deep. The Shinnecock National Cultural Center and Museum is a great base point for exploring Indigenous living history on Long Island.

Walking through New York City means sometimes walking right by, or even directly on top of, Black history. Before Central Park was the sprawling green oasis it is today, it was home to Seneca Village, a thriving Black enclave full of free African American property owners. It was a refuge from the discrimination Black people faced in the city. The city used eminent domain to steal the land and destroy the village to build Central Park.

It wasn’t until a construction site was underway in 1991 that the African Burial Ground Memorial was discovered, with thousands of skeletal remains of enslaved and free Black people who lived in colonial New York. Today, visitors can book ranger-led tours of the site. There can be no honoring NYC’s Black history without uplifting Harlem, the once cultural capital of Black America, from the famous Apollo Theater to Sylvia’s Restaurant, a longtime Harlem soul-food staple.

New Jersey is the heart of Lenape land, also known as Lenapehoking. Archaeological evidence shows they arrived in what is now New Jersey around 10,000 years ago, and the Paterson Museum transports visitors back to that time with replica and original artifacts like the tools the Lenape people used centuries ago.

Black freedom wouldn’t look the same without the state. There are numerous stops documented in New Jersey that helped escapees along the Underground Railroad (UGR) outrun bounty hunters. Peter Mott was a free Black man who opened his home as a mid-19th-century secret stop for the enslaved. For a window into the time, visit the house, which is now a museum in the state’s only African-American incorporated municipality, Lawnside.

Eastern Pennsylvania is also Lenape land, an Indigenous territory that stretched from Maryland and into upstate New York. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School opened in 1879, and thousands of Native children from all over the U.S. left home to live there, where the mission was “kill the Indian” to “save the man,” doing so through forced assimilation, like forcing students to speak English.

The oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church is located in Philadelphia, founded by Bishop Richard Allen in 1787. When the congregation opened its doors, it was a haven for African Americans who, at the time, were forced to sit in the nose-bleeds during services at white churches. It ultimately became a cornerstone of the community’s organizing and a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Early American Galleries Collection explores the city’s role as the cultural capital of a young U.S. and the contributions of Black and Indigenous artists who played an undeniable role in the development of American art.

We know her as Hariett Tumban. But she was born Aramita Ross in Dorchester County, where she spent her formative years along Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a patchwork landscape of swamps, streams, and woodlands, until she escaped from slavery in 1849. Road trip along the Tubman Byway for a tour of sites and historical markers detailing Tubman’s early life, like the Brodess Farm where she was enslaved, and learn about her abolitionist work at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park.

The state is home to the Piscataway Nation, the Native people who originally inhabited the lands between the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. Their name means “the people were the water blends” and traditionally they hunted, fished, crabbed, and lived off the oyster-laden beds stretching from Southern Maryland through Baltimore to Washington D.C. By the end of the 17th century and two centuries before the Trail of Tears, the Piscataway people’s language and ways of life were nearly erased by colonial expansion, disease, and land theft in Maryland. Today, Piscataway history is preserved on its ancestral land at Piscataway Park in Accokeek, Maryland.

In Maryland, no food quite interweaves Black and Indigenous culture as much as seafood. Honor that history at the U.S.’s first Black woman-owned oyster bar, The Urban Oyster, in Baltimore.

Although Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland, Delaware plays an important role in her story. Many of her life-saving routes ran right through the state, and she and the freedom seekers she led had to follow rivers and cross canals, which was no easy feat. The Byway that begins in Maryland continues through Delaware, where Tubman’s legacy is honored at Tubman-Garrett Riverfront Park, the Delaware History Museum, and the Mitchell Center for African American Heritage, all located in Wilmington.

The People of the Tidewaters, the Nanticoke Indian Tribe, also call Delaware home. Their annual Powwow has happened annually in September for the past 47 years. The event features music, dancing, and a Grand Entry procession, while Native artisans trade and sell their handmade jewelry, moccasins, paintings, and more — it’s the best way to experience Nanticoke traditions up close and personal.

By 1619, the first recorded enslaved Africans washed up on Point Comfort, Virginia’s shores, kidnapped from Angola by Portuguese colonial forces, before some were taken to plantations in Jamestown, the colonial capital. Pocahontas, the daughter of a Powhatan chief, originally observed English settlers in 1607 when they landed in Jamestown. Legend has it that Pocahontas saved English colonist John Smith from execution by her father, but historians debate its accuracy, as it may have been a ritual that he misinterpreted. What is true is that Pocahontas was a translator, an ambassador, and a leader for her people.

Shockoe Valley, once Powhatan territory, was the center of Richmond’s commerce, including the slave trade from the 1830s through the end of the Civil War. Now, the Shockoe Project is underway, and by 2037, it’ll be home to the National Slavery Museum, the African Burial Ground, Lumpkin’s Slave Jail, the Trail of the Enslaved, and more to honor this history.

Today, one of the best ways to experience Richmond’s Black history and culture is to visit Historic Jackson Ward, once known as the Harlem of the South. Pull up a seat at the Lillie Pearl for Black Southern classics with a twist, like Sweet Potato Cornbread and Lobster & Shrimp Grits.

The Lumbee Tribe is the largest Indigenous group east of the Mississippi with over 55,000 members. And although they’ve been calling southeastern North Carolina home for centuries, they received federal recognition from the U.S. government in December 2025 after a 137-year struggle. To dive into the history of another North Carolinian tribe, the Cherokee, head to the mountainside outdoor theater to watch Unto These Hills, a drama about the formation of the Band of Cherokee Indians, starting with their first contact with European settlers.

We can’t talk about North Carolina without mentioning its importance to the Civil Rights Movement. The state was a hub for Black freedom fighters. Today, a visit to Greensboro’s International Civil Rights Center and Museum means standing in the very place where the 1960 Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins took place.

The Gullah Geechee Heritage Corridor stretches from North Carolina to Florida, and South Carolina holds much of the group’s culture historically and today. Of the thousands of enslaved Africans captured and brought to North America, over 40% arrived through Charleston Harbor. Their descendants, the Gullah Geechee, have preserved ancestral traditions uniquely. The architecturally stunning International African American Museum is the perfect place to step into this history.

At the Charleston City Market, vendors sell handwoven Sweetgrass baskets. For a taste of the culture, grab a plate from Hannibal’s Soul Kitchen, where Soul Food staples are prepared Geechee-style, including Hoppin’ John and okra soup. This coastal area has long been home to the Catawba, known as the “People of the River.” They, too, were artisans known for their pottery and jewelry, which are showcased at the Catawba Cultural Center in Rock Hill.

Black culture and Atlanta go hand in hand at this point. The city’s been a hub for Black history for generations. One of the best places to start exploring is the Sweet Auburn District, the birth neighborhood of Martin Luther King Jr. Step into King’s beginnings at his namesake center and delve into the Civil Rights history he and many others shaped at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. For history meets food and drink, pull up a seat at Paschal’s Soul Food Restaurant, where King met, strategized, and ate with his comrades during the Movement.

A lesser-visited area of Georgia is Sapelo Island, where Gullah Geechee communities, The Hog Hammock, remain on the state’s coast. For decades, developers and corporations have encroached on their ancestral lands. The island is only accessible by ferry or private boat, and you need an invitation to visit. Sapelo Island Tours is owned by 10th-generation local JR Grovner, whose tours offer a glimpse into local customs with a visit to a historic African American burial ground and a Geechee basket-making demonstration.