In the videos, the old meeting hall is packed with people taking the Oath of Allegiance as they become American citizens. They come from all over the planet, clearly, and their faces shine with gratitude and hope for their future in our country. Many of them weep, clutching American flags.

Boston’s Faneuil Hall is called the “Cradle of Liberty,” and has been the site of countless speeches, meetings, and protests on every side of every issue—health care, gay rights, women’s suffrage, the horrors of the Civil War, the horrors of slavery—going all the way back to the Revolution itself, when the bodies of Crispus Attucks and James Caldwell, victims of the Boston Massacre, lay in state there in 1770. The venerable building, funded by a slave trader, has served many, many times to house passionate defenses of freedom. Frederick Douglass himself delivered his famous speech “Do Not Send Back the Fugitive” there in 1850.

Fresh waves of activists have continued to gather in Faneuil Hall, each generation’s call for liberty shocking to the previous generation. There was a time when abolitionists were regarded as fringe radicals; women suffragists were hysterical extremists; gay marriage was ludicrously unthinkable. And here we are. The building has stood through it all, a testament to how our democracy, in all its messiness and struggle, is designed for resilience and rebirth. The newly minted citizens who gather in Faneuil Hall remind us: freedom is always in our grasp if we want it badly enough.

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Links:

• The best video I've seen of a naturalization ceremony in Faneuil Hall was at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, but I can't find it online. The video brought me to tears, and I highly recommend visiting the Constitution Center itself.

  
  

• “Immigrants kept from Faneuil Hall citizenship ceremony,”  by Sarah Betancourt, GBH Boston, December 5, 2025

  
  

• Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America

  
  

• “Do Not Send Back the Fugitive: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on October 14, 1850,” Frederick Douglass

  
  

• Notable events at Faneuil Hall - Wikipedia

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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