An advocacy group is calling for the renaming of Boston's historic Faneuil Hall because its namesake had ties to slavery.
The meeting house built in 1742 is where Samuel Adams and other American colonists made some of the earliest speeches urging independence from Britain.
Kevin Peterson is founder of the New Democracy Coalition. He says the name is an embarrassment to the city because Peter Faneuil was a wealthy merchant who owned and traded slaves. Faneuil built the meeting house for Boston.
Peterson suggests renaming Faneuil Hall to honor Crispus Attucks, a black man considered the first American killed in the Revolutionary War.
Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson cautions that removing any part of the nation's complicated history "unbalances it" and "renders it false."
