In this bronze piece at West Newton Street and Columbus Avenue, steps from a sculpture of Harriet Tubman, a man and two women arise from the Tree of Knowledge.

The figures stand tall, resolute and strong, a departure from common depictions of emancipation and slavery at the time.

Phillis Wheatley was brought to Boston on a slave ship in 1761 and put to work as a personal servant to the Wheatley family on what is now State Street in the financial district.

She became the first African American and first U.S. slave to publish a book of poems, as well as the third American woman to do so.

One of the best-known statues of black history in Boston, the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial pays homage to one of the first African American regiments in the Civil War.