Stop by our table next Saturday during your stroll on Florence Night Out as we celebrate our neighborhood past and present. Take a few minutes to imagine 175 years ago when some of our country’s greatest fighters for racial justice as well as economic and gender equality walked the same streets that we step on today. Learn about such luminaries as David Ruggles,the renowned abolitionist who helped over 500 formerly enslaved while in NY to find freedom, including Frederick Douglass. Scarred by years of physical and emotional abuse by foes especially incensed by the persistence of a Black man, Ruggles found peace and renewal in Florence’s Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a community dedicated to equality of race, gender and class. There, among many notable antislavery activists, Ruggles met the once enslaved preacher Sojourner Truth, who in Florence turned her considerable oratory skills to developing a career as a nationally renowned antislavery lecturer and author. In Florence, Ruggles healed and reinvented himself as a doctor, establishing a Water Cure establishment. You can also hear about the significant Black community on 1850s Nonotuck St, many of whom were formerly enslaved who found work and community here, for a time. Come find inspiration in the stories of these and others whose homes you pass every day.