(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 where we keep … this is the scroll. This is the document. We keep it where we store it for now.”
2. Tracking close up of the top of the scroll
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts:
"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."
4. Close up of the scroll as Rev. Badger takes it out of a box and unfurls it
UPSOUND (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: "It’s five feet long by about nine inches wide, I’d say. You see it’s …"
5. Tracking shot of some of the signatures on the scroll, UPSOUND (English) Reporter: “How many people signed it?”
Rev. Diane Badger: “A hundred and sixteen.”
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts:
"All I know is it was in good enough shape in 1902, so they somehow reproduced it in a book. It was in the history (of the Baptist church). So we’ll see … 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) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: "That’s about what we do. We found it in the boxes like this, or she did. It was like that."
Jennifer Sten Cromack, discovered lost Baptist anti-slavery scroll: "Actually was right like this. It was right inside."
Badger: "Yeah."
Cromack: "I lifted the cover and that’s what happened."
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Jennifer Sten Cromack, discovered lost Baptist anti-slavery scroll:
"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
UPSOUND (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts: "Alright, let’s be careful.”
Jennifer Sten Cromack: “And I’ll just go slow.”
Rev. Badger: “You move, not me."
Cromack: "Yep."
10. Overhead view of the fully unfurled scroll
UPSOUND (English) Jennifer Sten Cromack, discovered lost Baptist anti-slavery scroll: "There we go."
Rev. Badger: "Yeah. That’s about five, six feet long."
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Rev. Diane Badger, Administrator, American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts:
"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."
12. Close up of part of the top of the scroll
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