Lynn by the late 1840s had more than 10,000 residents and the decade’s start saw the city become a lightning rod for opposition to slavery with activists challenging the segregated Eastern Railroad and galvanizing opposition to slavery into protests, civic actions and demonstrations.
Lynn Female Anti-Slavery Society Secretary Mary Green boarded a Boston-bound train and sat in a “white” car with her baby on her lap. A 1976 Daily Evening Item recounting written by Nathan Gass said Green was taken from the train and beaten. Undeterred, she wrote the railroad’s stockholders, insisting, “I think I have a right in common with others to go in any car I choose.”
She counted allies in her mission to fight the railroad’s racist policies, including Society President Deborah S. Henshaw and Hannah Alley; the Hutchinson family singers, and George Washington Raddin who, Gass recalls, opened his Boston Street home on the Saugus line to slaves journeying to freedom.
Raddin’s name, appropriately enough, graces a local street sign and other Lynn streets bear the names Basset, Buffum and Newhall honoring Lynn residents who were prominent citizens and anti-slavery activists.
According to Gass’ account, famed orator Frederick Douglass took up the fight against the railroad and climbed aboard an Eastern Railroad car with abolitionist and eventual Lynn Mayor James N. Buffum. Gass quoted historian Carlton Mabee’s account of their experience:
Douglass and Buffum took seats in a “white” car. The conductor asked Douglass to leave the car and received this reply from Douglass, “If you throw me out this seat will go with me.”
Buffum asked the conductor, “Can’t I ride with him, if he goes to the forward car? I want to have a conversation with him.”
“No,” answered the conductor, “I’d as soon haul you out of this as I’d haul him from this.”
“There are very few in this car,” interjected Douglass, “and why, since no objection has been made, do you order me out?”
Mabee recounted how another passenger proposed a vote on allowing Douglass and Buffum to remain in the white car. Other passengers endorsed the idea but the conductor said company rules demanded segregated seating.
He enlisted eight men to help him eject Buffum and Douglass from the car and one of the men struck a passenger who objected to the removal.
The incident turned Lynn’s central railroad station into a focal point for anti-segregation protests and railroad Superintendent Stephen Chase ordered trains to not stop in Lynn, according to Mabee, for two days following Douglass’ and Buffum’s actions.
“Negroes,” Chase was quoted as saying, “ought not to expect railroads to abolish Negro cars before churches abolished Negro pews.”
By 1843, Eastern Railroad, faced with protests and boycotts, had abolished segregated cars.