Researching Black History at the BPL
Introduction
While Boston is recognized as a formative place for the likes of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Audre Lorde, much of the civil rights activism in Boston remains underappreciated. Civil rights organizing flourished through both national and local organizations. Most famously, the fight for civil rights came to a head during the Boston busing crisis, where white Bostonians violently fought desegregation efforts. The crisis made national news and exposed the racial and socioeconomic tensions in Boston.
On This Page:
- A timeline of Civil Rights era Black activism in Boston
- Related primary sources and research projects
- Related nonfiction books
- Documentaries and videos
Image Right: The Emergency Committee for a National Mobilization Against Racism issues a call to march in Boston Dec. 14, 1974 after white mobs hurled racial epithets and attacked school buses carrying Black children at the South Boston High School. Four buses left Washington, D.C. carrying about 180 people while dozens more made the drive up the east coast to join an estimated 15,000 demonstrators who ranged from pacifists to Marxist poet Amiri Baraka. Comedian and activist Dick Gregory told the crowd, “Let’s not fool ourselves, the schools in South Boston are just as bad as the schools in Roxbury. What we really want is an end to bad schooling.” Text and image courtesy of Washington Area Spark.
1949 - Otto P. and Muriel S. Snowden found Freedom House in Roxbury, a center of civil rights and advocacy for Boston’s African American community
1960 - Ruth Batson and the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) establish education subcommittee
1961 - Concerned Higginson Parents Association formed (CHPA)
1962 - Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD) founded, Melnea Cass is the only woman charter member appointed
1963 - STOP Day-Black work stoppage and march
1963 - Mothers for Adequate Welfare formed
1963 - First school “Stay out for Freedom” and Freedom Schools
1963 - NAACP present 14 demands to Boston School Committee and stage “March on Roxbury”
1964 - Second school “Stay Out” and Freedom Schools
1964 - Roxbury Multi-Service Center (RMSC) founded
1964 - NAACP & CORE help Roxbury tenant lead first rent strikes
1965 - Mothers’ Sit-In & Roxbury residents dump garbage at City Hall
1965 - Rev. Vernon E. "Little Arrow" Carter leads a 114-day Freedom Vigil outside the Boston School Committee headquarters to protest racial inequalities in Boston's schools
1965 - Roxbury Community School founded: first of four alternative Black independent schools
1965 - MLK marches with 22,000 Bostonians to the Boston Common
1966 - Mothers for Adequate Welfare march to Boston Common and State House
1966 - Creation of the Lower Roxbury Community Corporation (now Madison Park Development Corp.) one of the first CDCs (Community Development Corporations) in the country
1967 - Mother’s for Adequate Welfare sit-ins at Grove Hall and violent response by Boston Police
1968 - Mel King leads tent city occupation to protest Boston’s urban renewal policy. Tent City housing complex was created as a result of the protests
1974 - Combahee River Collective formed in support of Black lesbians
Image Above: The registration counter at NAACP convention held at the Sheraton Boston Hotel in 1967. This image is part of the Brearley Collection at the Boston Public Library.
Timeline courtesy of The City of Boston
Primary Sources and Research Projects
An online exhibit examining the genesis of the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation in Boston. It includes numerous archival resources.
An interactive exhibit showing different parts of the Boston area that Malcolm X, then Malcolm Little, had connections to. The exhibit includes historical photographs and detailed historical descriptions.
- Beyond Busing : Boston School Desegregation Archival Resources
The Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection is a digital library of scanned archival materials documenting the desegregation of Boston’s public schools. The collection brings together materials from numerous Boston-area institutions and covers the time period beginning with the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and focusing on the Morgan v. Hennigan case (1974) and the court-ordered plan to desegregate the Boston Public Schools (BPS). The collections document the implementation of busing students to different neighborhoods to rebalance the racial makeup of schools, the resulting citywide unrest, and developments in Boston school desegregation efforts in the following decades.
- Boston Public Schools Historical Research: Busing Crisis
BPL research guide dedicated to the Boston busing crisis with a wealth of resources.
- Boston’s 1960s Civil Rights Movement: A Look Back
The Boston’s 1960s Civil Rights Movement: A Look Back collection was created in the spirit of the African symbol Sankofa that in the Akan language of Ghana is loosely translated as “Go Back to Fetch It,” meaning to learn from one’s past. It consists of more than 14-hours of GBH radio and television programming created during the 1963-1967 period of the civil rights movement in Boston. The collection provides an opportunity for students and scholars to get a closer look at some of the historic events in Boston’s civil rights history as they actually unfolded, from the perspective of the activists, participants and other stakeholders.
- Combahee River Collective Statement
A description of the groundbreaking Black Feminist Lesbian group as well as a link to their seminal Combahee River Collective Statement.
- Freedom House Photographs
In 2007, the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners awarded Northeastern University Libraries, Archives and Special Collections Department $20,336 for a project to digitize and make available on the Web 2,441 photographs and negatives, dating from 1950-1975, from the Freedom House collection. The images in this collection document Freedom House's early activities to create an integrated Roxbury, foster citizen participation in the urban renewal of Roxbury, and implement early oversight
of Boston Public Schools desegregation. The photographs include images of well-known figures, local community activists, Freedom House events, and the Roxbury neighborhood. This project continues Northeastern University Libraries’ dedication to preserving and making accessible the history of Boston’s African American community. -
The Ways Boston Helped Shape the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.
An article from Boston University's Alumni Magazine about MLK's connection to Boston. King earned his doctorate degree at BU and later return for multiple civil rights demonstrations, including leading a march of over 20,000 people from the South End to Boston Common
An interactive map and online exhibit discussing the history of redlining and segregation in the City of Boston.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority was established in 1957 to oversee development that was previously led by the Boston Housing Authority. Its oversight eventually expanded to include development beyond public housing. The BRA's redevelopment stewardship included the jurisdiction to buy and sell property, acquire property through eminent domain, and grant tax concession to encourage commercial and residential development. The City Planning Board was merged with the BRA in 1960. In 2016, the BRA was renamed The Boston Planning and Development Agency.
A Suffolk University guide to collections related to the busing crisis in Boston
An article from WBUR about Freedom Schools in Boston. This article is part of a series on the 50th anniversary of the Boston busing crisis.
The Boston’s 1960s Civil Rights Movement: A Look Back collection was created in the spirit of the African symbol Sankofa that in the Akan language of Ghana is loosely translated as “Go Back to Fetch It,” meaning to learn from one’s past. It consists of more than 14-hours of GBH radio and television programming created during the 1963-1967 period of the civil rights movement in Boston. The collection provides an opportunity for students and scholars to get a closer look at some of the historic events in Boston’s civil rights history as they actually unfolded, from the perspective of the activists, participants and other stakeholders.
A digital exhibit, timeline, and mapping project about Civil Rights in Roxbury & the Emerald Necklace through a Northeastern University course entitled Cities, Landscape, and Modern Culture.
This exhibit focuses on the experiences of African American students and faculty members at Northeastern during the 1960s and the 1970s. It also examines the political activism on campus which led to the establishment of academic and community resources for African Americans, as well as the celebration of black culture at Northeastern.
Image Above, Top: A portrait of activist Dr. Melnea Cass, the "First Lady of Roxbury." Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.
Image Above, Middle: Photo of Roberta O'Neil, Chairperson of the Mission Hill chapter of the Mothers for Adequate Welfare, with her children speaking to a reporter at the MAW sit-in at the Roxbury Crossing Welfare Office in 1968. Image via the City of Boston.
Image Above, Bottom: A 1975 map from the Boston Redevelopment Authority identifying places for urban renewal. This map is part of the Boston Redevelopment Authority Collection at the BPL
Nonfiction Books
Boston Against Busing by ISBN: 0807842923Publication Date: 1991-03-01In 'Boston Against Busing' Formisano explores the sources of white opposition to school desegregation. He sees white resistance as an example of reactionary populism, a social movement mixing both populist and conservative elements.
Chain of Change by Call Number: F73.9.N4 K56 1981ISBN: 9780896081055Publication Date: 1981One-time mayoral candidate, founder of the Rainbow Coalition, and longtime political activist, Mel King surveys Black life in Boston, including the forces of racism and liberation, and shows how the Black community has worked to establish its identity, language, and organizations. It includes interviews with several prominent local activists, including Elma Lewis, A. Robert Phillips, Sarah-Ann Shaw, Ruth Batson, Melnea Cass, and Leo Fletcher.
The Other Boston Busing Story by Call Number: LC214.523.B67 E38 2020ISBN: 9781684580293Publication Date: 2020-10-23METCO, America's longest-running voluntary school desegregation program, buses black children from Boston's city neighborhoods to predominantly white suburban schools. In contrast to the infamous violence and rage that greeted forced school busing within the city in the 1970s, the work of METCO has quietly and calmly promoted school integration. But how has this program affected the lives of its graduates? Would they choose to participate if they had it to do over again? Would they place their own children on the bus to suburbia? In The Other Boston Busing Story, sixty-five METCO graduates who are now adults answer those questions and more, vividly recalling their own stories and assessing the benefits and hardships of crossing racial and class lines on their way to school. As courts and policymakers today are forcing the abandonment of desegregation, this book offers an accessible and moving account of a rare program that, despite serious challenges, provides a practical remedy for the persistent inequalities in American education. This new edition puts the original findings in a contemporary context.
A People's History of the New Boston by Call Number: F73.52 .V73 2014ISBN: 9781625340764Publication Date: 2014-06-17Although Boston today is a vibrant and thriving city, it was anything but that in the years following World War II. By 1950 it had lost a quarter of its tax base over the previous twenty-five years, and during the 1950s it would lose residents faster than any other major city in the country. Credit for the city's turnaround since that time is often given to a select group of people, all of them men, all of them white, and most of them well off. In fact, a large group of community activists, many of them women, people of color, and not very well off, were also responsible for creating the Boston so many enjoy today. This book provides a grassroots perspective on the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, when residents of the city's neighborhoods engaged in an era of activism and protest unprecedented in Boston since the American Revolution. Using interviews with many of those activists, contemporary news accounts, and historical sources, Jim Vrabel describes the demonstrations, sit-ins, picket lines, boycotts, and contentious negotiations through which residents exerted their influence on the city that was being rebuilt around them. He includes case histories of the fights against urban renewal, highway construction, and airport expansion; for civil rights, school desegregation, and welfare reform; and over Vietnam and busing. He also profiles a diverse group of activists from all over the city, including Ruth Batson, Anna DeFronzo, Moe Gillen, Mel King, Henry Lee, and Paula Oyola. Vrabel tallies the wins and losses of these neighborhood Davids as they took on the Goliaths of the time, including Boston's mayors. He shows how much of the legacy of that activism remains in Boston today.
Reforming Boston Schools, 1930 to the Present by ISBN: 0230111459Publication Date: 2011-06-15Boston’s schools in 2006 won the Eli Broad Prize for the Most Improved Urban School System in America. But from the 1930s into the 1970s the city schools succumbed to scandals including the sale of jobs and racial segregation. This book describes the black voices before and after court decisions and the struggles of Boston teachers before and after collective bargaining. The contributions of universities, corporations and political leaders to restore academic achievement are evaluated by one who observed Boston schools for forty years.
Documentaries and Videos
The film documents that remarkable concert and the politics around it. Boston Mayor Kevin White and his colleagues almost by accident realized that by televising the James Brown concert they could keep people indoors that night prevent widespread rioting. The film is almost testimony to the power of music in general and the power of James Brown's music in particular. The film is a tribute to the Godfather of Soul and the role he would come to play in working for civil rights. This film is also available as a DVD at the BPL.
A 2021 lecture held by Boston University on the untold stories of civil rights leaders in Boston featuring Assistant Professor of History & African American Studies Paula Austin, filmmaker Roberto Mighty, and Lecturer in Art & Graphic Design Jessie Rubenstein. Beyond names such as Martin Luther King Jr., the panelists discussed the mark left by other less-known leaders who helped shape the city of Boston and its role in the struggle for Black freedom.