(3 Jul 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Groton, Massachusetts – 27 June 2025
1. American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts Administrator Rev. Diane Badger takes a recovered anti-slavery scroll from a drawer, UPSOUND (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: “This is the scroll.”
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
"The Declaration and Protest Against Slavery was a document that was written in 1847 under the auspices of the Boston Baptist Association. It really was the Baptist ministers taking a stand against slavery and there were 116 pastors in Massachusetts that signed this declaration saying that they could not stand slavery – that the slavery was not something they could really adhere to, believe in, and it had to stop."
3. Tracking close up of the top of the scroll
4. Close up of the scroll as Rev. Badger takes it out of a box and unfurls it
5. Tracking shot of some of the signatures on the scroll
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
"All I know is it was in good enough shape in 1902, so they somehow reproduced it in a book … And then it kind of got rolled up and put away, and nobody touched it. It’s been in the box ever since then, as far as we can tell."
7. Overhead shot of Rev. Badger and historian Jennifer Sten Cromack showing where Cromack found the scroll inside a box stored in the church’s archive storage area, UPSOUND (English) Jennifer Sten Cromack, discovered lost Baptist anti-slavery scroll: "Actually was right like this. It was right inside."
Rev. Diane Badger: "Yeah."
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Jennifer Sten Cromack, discovered lost Baptist anti-slavery scroll: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
"Yeah, very surprised because I’ve been in and out of here, I don’t know, thousands of times and I spent lots of work on those files over there and just to open a box and have it right there was amazing"
9. Rev. Badger and Cromack unfurl the scroll
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
"Declaration and protest of Baptist ministers. We, the undersigned citizens of the United States of America and ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ, consider the positions which we occupy and its relations which we are sustained to God and our country as requiring of us at the present time a public and explicit declaration of our views with respect to the subject of slavery."
11. Overhead view of the fully unfurled scroll
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: ++COVERED++
"It’s significant to our history, because it gives you a sense that as Baptists, we’re very big into social justice. And there’s a fine line between being political and having social justice, but that document speaks so much as to that time as it does in a lot of ways to today’s world. As you know, we cannot lord it over another person, you know. Slavery makes different forms nowadays and human trafficking and that type of thing, and it happens not only in other countries, but in some ways in this country too that we’re not aware of."
13. Close up of part of the top of the scroll
14. Rev. Badger unfurls the scroll on her own
15. Tracking shot down the length of the scroll being held up by Rev. Badger
STORYLINE:
Rev. Diane Badger is the administrator for the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts.
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