For more than 60 years, the Freedom Trail has told the story of Americas struggle for freedom. About 1.5 million people walk the faded red brick trail each year, visiting such storied sites as Faneuil Hall, Old North Church, and the Paul Revere House.

But there is another Boston-based story of a struggle for freedom, one told by the lesser-known Black Heritage Trail, which explores the history of the African-American community on Beacon Hill in the 1800s and the abolitionist movement that was rooted there.

Now, thanks to a newcomer to Boston who saw this history with fresh eyes and found a way to reinterpret it, the trails have undergone a 21st century rebranding.

Beginning Memorial Day, when the citys new $7 million visitors center opens at Faneuil Hall, the trails will be jointly known as Bostons Trails to Freedom.

The idea came from Cassius Cash, who moved to Boston two years ago to become superintendent of two of Bostons national parks - the Boston National Historical Park, which includes some of the sites on the Freedom Trail, and the Boston African American National Historic Site, which includes the Black Heritage Trail. The 1.6-mile walking tour illuminates Bostons significant connections to the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad.

By Cashs admission, he was a long shot for the job. He grew up in Memphis and had never been to Boston. He didnt work for the National Park Service; he was trained as a wildlife biologist and worked for the US Forest Service.

Though he is African-American, until he started the job in Boston he knew nothing about the citys rich African-American back story: that the African Meeting House was a nexus for abolitionist activity, for example, or that Massachusetts was one of the first states to declare slavery unconstitutional.

I did not know there was a free black community at the time, said Cash, 43, a compact man in a gray and green National Park Service ranger uniform and flat hat who likes to be called Cash.

I didnt know about the various characters and the boldness and courage they had to do the things they did - to take on this institute we now call slavery. The end of slavery started here, said Cash, who two years later still seems energized by the story. It happened here in the 1800s.

Cassius Marcellus Cash came to Boston - with his wife, Vonda, a dental assistant, and two daughters - from a very different world. Born in 1968, he was named for the legendary boxer and activist Cassius Marcellus Clay, later known as Muhammad Ali.

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Blazing the other freedom trail