Our little household—the pretty schoolmistress, Clara Pritchett; young Phoebe Potter, who worked as a domestic on Beacon Hill; Mr. and Mrs. Howard, who owned our boarding house; and their young children—along with what the newspapers later reported to be almost three thousand other black Bostonians—was on its way to Tremont Temple to await word that Congress had passed the Thirteenth Amendment, the abolition of slavery. 

          While I wasn’t looking, winter had arrived. Snow piled up to our front door kept Mr. Howard busy shoveling the steps each morning. Iced white branches arched over the walkway through Commonwealth Avenue, forming a lacy scrim against brilliant afternoon sunsets, and skaters flocked to Frog Pond in Boston Com...

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