Renaming of Bussey Street to Honor Legacy of Enslaved Woman

left to right: Ted Landsmark, Michelle Wu, Ned Friedman

Prof. Ted Landsmark joined an October 26, 2024 moment of restorative justice and reconciliation in Boston. Participants included Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Ned Friedman, Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, who took part in the renaming, organized by Jerry Mogul, of Bussey Street to Flora Way after Flora, a Black woman enslaved in this area of Boston in the 18th century. Not much is known about Flora except that she was a woman of African descent, that she was enslaved in the Dudley household, and that some of the Dudley land is now part of the Arnold Arboretum.

Mayor Wu thanked community members and city teams who organized the renaming, noting that “We know the price for which she was sold. But we don’t know Flora’s story. We don’t know when she came to the U.S., what she liked and what she didn’t, whether she had a family. We don’t even know her full name. But while we will never know Flora for her full self, we can give her this part of our city. We know that what we do here today won’t right the wrongs done to Flora and the countless other enslaved people whose names have been scrubbed from the streets they helped pave. But it does tell us something about what we’ve done, how we’ve changed, and who we’ve become in the years since.”