Boston takes rare step of apologizing for its role in slavery and its lasting harm

About a quarter of all white Bostonians who had estate inventory taken between 1700 and 1775 owned enslaved people, according to Western Washington University history professor Jared Ross Hardesty, who is quoted in the resolution. At the peak of slavery in Boston in the mid-18th century, Hardesty estimates more than 1,600 Africans were enslaved in Boston.