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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Who Is Essential Cambridge? Part 4: COVID-19

In our last installment, we examined the role of nurses as essential workers in Cambridge and beyond, exploring the ways in which gendered notions of caregiving and self-sacrifice both elevated nurses in the public opinion and limited their ability to advocate for better pay and working conditions. In this, our final installment, we look at…

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Who Is Essential Cambridge? Part 3: Nurses

In our last installment, we examined the role of Cambridge teachers as essential workers during the twentieth century. As it involved nurturing young children, teaching was viewed by many as a natural outgrowth of women’s caregiving responsibilities within the family, and education, especially at the elementary level, was considered a profession to which women devoted…

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Who Is Essential Cambridge? Part 2: Teachers

In the first part of our series, “Who Is Essential Cambridge?,” we examined the role of Cambridge women in the industrial sector during and between the World Wars. Women played an important role in industrial production in the years before the outbreak of World War I—a role that continued and intensified over the coming decades.…

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Lois Lilley Howe Hub

Lois Lilley Howe Photo

As part of our year asking “Who Are Cambridge Women?” meet Lois Lilley Howe. Learn about her life and work.

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