The intersection of Washington Street and Inner Belt Road in Somerville, Massachusetts is largely unassuming. Steps away from the interstate and an Orange Line stop, a pizza joint sits opposite a Holiday Inn.
At the very edge of the hotel parking lot, a statue stands behind a fence, the hotel signage looming large behind it. The statue depicts Paul Revere, positioned there to mark his historic ride down this road 250 years ago.
To author and independent historian Catherine Sasanov, this spot represents a little-told Black history event that happened about two decades before Revere rode by. It centers on an enslaved man named Mark.
Sasanov said most people first hear of Mark through a single, grim mention in Revere’s famous testimony: “After I passed Charlestown Neck, and got nearly opposite where Mark was hung in chains.”…