Researching Black History at the BPL

...includes racial composition of neighborhoods, teenage pregnancy statistics, minority representation in specific occupations and municipal and state employment, voter registration by neighborhood...

Demographic and health data for Boston's Black residents; includes population (by neighborhood, ancestry, education, poverty, median household income), births by maternal birthplace, birthweight, infant mortality, HIV / AIDS incidence, sexually transmitted diseases rates, hospitalizations, leadings causes of hospitalization, victims of violence related injuries by neighborhood and by race, mortality (deaths), leading causes of death, heart disease rates, cancer mortality, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, percent obese or overweight, percent smokers, and percent with no insurance.

...a report on the current racial climate in metro Boston; sections include: Metro Boston's racial context through the 1970s // ... racial context from the 1970s to the present // Patterns of discrimination in Metro Boston // Attitudes toward integration // Study questions // Perceptions of discrimination in employment, housing, day-to-day forms of discrimination // Attitudes toward school integration and more

Everyone with a sense of fair play is horrified by stories of racially inspired abuse. As bad as such incidents can be, however, what is most damaging to the well-being of blacks is the constant media assertions that blacks are inexorably inferior. It can be difficult for people to feel motivated to achieve when they lack the confidence to believe in their own abilities. Bostons Banner Years: 19652015 seeks to refute the negative implications of alleged black incompetence by chronicling black success. Over the years, editor Melvin B. Miller has developed an institutional memory of his communitys affairs. He has used that unique resource to help produce this collection, in which well-qualified reporters share researched accounts of black achievement in Boston, creating a record for future generations of black community success. Stories of individual achievements of blacks can be inspiring, but they sometimes seem like aberrations. Providing numerous examples of blacks being assertive, competent, and successful, these essays make it impossible to apply the negative racial stereotype to blacks in Boston, a place that is to some extent an incubator of black success. This collection of essays presents a series of biographical profiles highlighting black achievement and success in Boston over the course of fifty years.

"The Fence is a monumental account of an urban travesty. Dick Lehr's depiction of one of the darkest chapters in recent Boston law enforcement history and the savage injustices perpetrated on two hero cops--one black, one white--has all the earmarks of a classic." -- Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River The Boston police officers who brutally beat Michael Cox at a deserted fence one icy night in 1995 knew soon after that they had made a terrible mistake. The badge and handgun under Cox's bloodied parka proved he was not a black gang member but a plainclothes cop chasing the same murder suspect his assailants were. Officer Kenny Conley, who pursued and apprehended the suspect while Cox was being beaten, was then wrongfully convicted by federal prosecutors of lying when he denied witnessing the attack on his brother officer. Both Cox and Conley were native Bostonians, each dedicating his life to service with the Boston Police Department. But when they needed its support, they were heartlessly and ruthlessly abandoned. A remarkable work of investigative journalism, Dick Lehr's The Fence tells the shocking true story of the attack and its aftermath--and exposes the lies and injustice hidden behind a "blue wall of silence."