Posts Tagged ‘Black history’
Black History in Cambridge: Online Resources Hub
Above Image: Saundra Graham speaks into a megaphone during the occupation of 319th Harvard Commencement June 11, 1970 (Courtesy Cambridge Historical Commission) Delve into these online resources that explore Black history in Cambridge. More programs and events about Cambridge’s Black history are being planned. To be notified, sign up for our monthly enewsletter. Articles Self-Guided…
Read More2021 History Café Recap
This spring, thanks to the generous support of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati and a grant from the Bridge Street Fund, a special initiative of Mass Humanities, History Cambridge was able to host two History Cafés exploring the rich history of the city’s Black community. Graduate intern Eshe Sherley created our Early Black Cambridge…
Read MoreCambridge Love Letters
In June 2021, History Cambridge held and event called “Cambridge Love Letters” at Starlight Square. We asked members of the larger Cambridge community to send us their love letters to the city. These are some of the submissions. Dear Cambridge, When I first arrived in your port twenty-one years ago, I had no idea how…
Read MoreSelf-Guided Tour: Stories from the Early African American Community of Old Cambridge
By Jules Long, Longfellow House – Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 2018 | Edited by Eshe Sherley, History Cambridge, 2021 Slavery in Pre-Revolutionary Cambridge The oldest existing mention of slavery in Massachusetts was recorded in 1638, when African prisoners arrived in the colony on the slave ship Desire, built in Marblehead the previous year. In…
Read MoreEarly Black Cambridge Resource Hub
Are you interested in learning more about the history of race, slavery, and African American life in the Cambridge area? This guide highlights many of the resources available that touch on these topics, including primary, secondary, and public-facing sources (such as self-guided tours and websites). While this hub is focused on material related to the 1700s, it also offers relevant material from later periods in Cambridge history.
Read MoreHistory Café: Harriet Jacobs and the World of Abolitionist Cambridge Women
Harriet Jacobs is best known for her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, in which she chronicles her enslavement in North Carolina, her subsequent period in hiding in a tiny attic garret, and her eventual escape north to freedom. But Jacobs was also for many years a resident of Cambridge, where she ran…
Read MoreHistory Café: Three Centuries of Black Cambridge
On June 9 we were joined via Zoom by Dr. Janie Ward for a discussion of the changing geographies of Black Cambridge. This History Café built on our previous program on Harriet Jacobs and the world of Cambridge’s abolitionist women, tracing the threads of the Black experience through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. We…
Read More‘Quiet Courage’: Maria Baldwin and the Racial Politics of Education in Cambridge
By Beth Folsom, Program Manager, History Cambridge In her 1905 report to the parents of ten-year-old Edward Cummings, his principal Maria Baldwin described him as “a most loveable little boy, and we are glad that he is part of our little community.”[1] Nearly six decades later, when that little boy had become the celebrated American…
Read MoreWomen’s History Hub
Profiles included: Barbara Ackermann | Maria Baldwin | Ann Bookman | Sara Chapman Bull | Joyce Chen | Helen Lee Franklin | Suzanne R. Green | Lois Lilley Howe | Edith Lesley | Eva Neer | Mercy Scollay | Elizabeth Sullivan | Phyllis Wallace Our 2020 theme was Who Are Cambridge Women? But why spend…
Read MoreSweet Souls
Sweet Souls, Voices from the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House in Cambridge Our 2019 Sweet Souls oral history project offers answers to questions of local engagement: What is the role of a settlement house institution like the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House in the history of engagement in Cambridge? How has the Fuller House–and the community that…
Read More