Inside the 219-year-old African Meeting House, where Frederick Douglass once thundered against slavery and Black families built their own schools as acts of defiance, community leaders gathered this week to warn against what they call an effort to erase America’s full history.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., joined leaders of Boston’s Black institutions for a walking tour of historic sites and a press conference, citing federal threats to museums, national parks and archives that document African American history.

“We stand on the grounds of the Abiel Smith School, one of the city’s oldest schools for Black children, where education itself was once an act of defiance,” Markey said. “These are not footnotes in our history. They are the chapters of the story of the United States of America — and

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