In a quiet corner of Northeast Philadelphia, history will speak again.
Inside the historic Byberry Friends Meeting House, audiences will step into the charged atmosphere of 1850s Philadelphia, where abolitionists Robert Purvis and Harriet Forten Purvis rallied neighbors to resist one of the nation’s most controversial laws. Rather than watching from theater seats, visitors will sit inside the very type of rooms where these conversations once unfolded.
“This Monstrous Law! Robert and Harriet Purvis and the Fugitive Slave Act,” presented by the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia and Millicent Sparks Productions, blends theater, music and historical interpretation to recreate local resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 — legislation that forced ordinary citizens to assist in the capture of enslaved people seeking freedom.