Early Black Cambridge Resource Hub

Lit up bottle tree grove with blue bottles against a twilight blue sky, with a building in the background

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.

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Annette LaMond: Economist Turned History Enthusiast

Cambridge resident and  CHS volunteer Annette LaMond has provided us with A History Reclaimed: The Society for the Protection of Native Plants and the Cambridge Plant Club, an in-depth, illustrated history of the two organizations that takes us back to their late 19th century origins.  “This history of the Society for the Protection of Native Plants grew out of my…

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Mercy Scollay and the Lifelong Work of Mending

By Katie Turner Getty, Independent Researcher and Writer When Mercy Scollay’s presumptive fiancé, Dr. Joseph Warren, was killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June of 1775, she was thrust into emotional and financial turmoil that would both parallel and outlast the political upheaval of the American Revolution. As the caretaker and surrogate mother…

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Women’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…

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Marian Darlington-Hope

Marian Darlington-Hope was born and raised in the Port neighborhood of Cambridge, where she has lived most of her life. She and other family members attended programs at the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House in her youth. As a teenager, she volunteered at the National Committee to Combat Fascism/Black Panther Party breakfast program housed at the…

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Phyllis Ann Wallace, A Leader for Equal Opportunity

Phyllis Wallace et all

By Annette LaMond* | S.M., MIT Sloan School of Management | Ph.D., Yale University  In 1975, Phyllis Wallace,1 then age 54, became the first Black  woman – and first woman – to receive tenure at MIT’s Sloan  School of Management. When Phyllis arrived at MIT in 1972, she rented an apartment in a tall-for-Cambridge building…

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Eva Neer : My Neighbor, Groundbreaking Biochemist

By Annette LaMond* | S.M., MIT Sloan School of Management | Ph.D., Yale University In 1978, my husband and I moved to Brewster Village – an 1880s “development” of Queen Anne Victorians off Brattle Street. We soon began to meet our new neighbors. In our first six months, we were invited to not one, but…

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Denise Foderingham

Denise Foderingham lived in the Port with her mother and sisters, and attended many Margaret Fuller House programs in her youth. She moved to Somerville in her 20’s and spent the majority of her career working in child care. She returned to the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House in December 2018, when she was hired as…

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Nancy Ryan

Nancy Ryan was born in New Bedford and moved to Cambridge in 1980 to begin her work as Director of the City of Cambridge Commission on the Status of Women. She has lived in the Port for forty years and worked in partnership with the Margaret Fuller House through her role as Director of the…

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