From Brook Farm to Glory: A Life of Robert Gould Shaw

Sunday, January 27, 2019, 3:00 p.m. at Theodore Parker Church, 1859 Centre Street, West Roxbury, MA

Robert Gould Shaw is best remembered as the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry, one of the first black regiments in the Civil War. Shaw’s story was told in the 1989 movie “Glory” but the film covered only a small part of his life and untimely death. 

Shaw was born into an affluent Boston family, and from an early age he was surrounded by Abolitionists, writers, reformers and Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Parker. Shaw even attended school at Brook Farm, the utopian community in West Roxbury. But his affluence and money did not guarantee that he would ever make a name for himself or live up to his family’s expectations. The Civil War changed that. 

Join Concord historian Richard Smith for an educational and entertaining lecture on the life of Robert Gould Shaw. Richard will tell you the story of Shaw’s life, from his early days at Brook Farm to his death at Fort Wagner, from West Roxbury to “Glory.”