Boston councilmember wants hearing to consider renaming Faneuil Hall due to slavery ties

Boston's City Council on Wednesday is expected to debate whether to hold a hearing on renaming Faneuil Hall, a popular tourist site that is named after a wealthy merchant who owned and traded slaves. In calling for the hearing, Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson has filed a resolution decrying the building's namesake, Peter Faneuil, as a “white supremacist, a slave trader, and a slave owner who contributed nothing recognizable to the ideal of democracy.” The downtown meeting house was built for the city by Faneuil in 1742 and was where Samuel Adams and other American colonists made some of the earliest speeches urging independence from Britain.