John T. Hilton

Hilton's former home at 12 Belknap Street, now 73–75 Joy Street, Boston. Photograph: NPS/Pollock.

John Telemachus Hilton (April 1801 – 5 March 1864) was a Black American Freemason and abolitionist active in Boston's campaigns for equal schooling. He worked as a barber and clothing seller.

Life in Boston

Born in Pennsylvania, Hilton moved to Boston in the 1820s. He and his wife Lavina Ames belonged to the African Baptist Church, whose building is now known as the African Meeting House.

The National Park Service identifies 12 Belknap Street as his home for a period in 1831. The building housed several Black community activists over the nineteenth century; its association with Hilton should not be taken to mean that he lived there throughout his Boston career.

Masonic activity

Hilton participated in the African Grand Lodge. In 1827 he advocated independence for Black Masonic bodies from white Masonic supervision. This formed part of the institutional development described in African Lodge No. 459 and Prince Hall Freemasonry.

A memorial speech delivered at the Prince Hall Grand Lodge on 22 March 1864 survives in the Phillips Library's digital collections. It provides a contemporary record of his commemoration within the fraternity.

Abolition and equal schools

Hilton helped found the Massachusetts General Colored Association in 1826, supported William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper The Liberator, and joined the Boston Vigilance Committee in 1850 to assist people escaping slavery. He also petitioned for integrated schools and offered classes at home during the boycott of the segregated Smith School.

The school campaign involved families, organisers and lawyers over many years. The Massachusetts legislature prohibited segregated public schools in 1855, and Boston's schools began integrating that September. Black Bostonians celebrated the change at a meeting on 17 December, honouring William Cooper Nell's work.

Hilton was among the speakers whose addresses appeared in Triumph of Equal School Rights in Boston, published by R. F. Wallcut in 1856. The pamphlet records the December 1855 meeting; its publication date is distinct from the date of the celebration.

Newspapers and political cooperation

Hilton's support for the Black press included assisting David Walker in 1828, when Walker became a Boston agent for Freedom's Journal. In his later “Appeal to the Free Colored Citizens of the United States”, published in The Liberator in February 1835, Hilton urged support for the newspaper and associated its circulation with the growth of antislavery societies. He used religious comparisons to make his political argument.

He also defended cooperation with white abolitionists. At an African Meeting House gathering in 1848, Hilton, Robert Morris, William Wells Brown and others opposed proposals for exclusively Black antislavery organisations. His work for integrated schools affected his family directly: he moved them to Cambridge so that his children could attend an integrated school.

The house now bearing his name had a wider history of antislavery activity. After Hilton's residence there, John R. Taylor used it as a boarding house that sheltered the freedom seeker Leonard Black. Later owner Jonas Clark also worked with the Boston Vigilance Committee.

See also

• Prince Hall
• African Lodge No. 459
• Freemasonry in the nineteenth century