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Researching Black History at the BPL

A guide on researching Black American history at the BPL and beyond

Neighborhoods

The Grove Hall Memory Project was an effort by the Grove Hall Branch of the Boston Public Library to capture stories and images from the lives of Roxbury residents and to explore the role of Roxbury in twentieth-century Boston. The goal of the project was to provide audio/visual "snapshots" of neighborhood life through the years, to tell the history of the neighborhood through the eyes of the people who live there, and to preserve those stories for future generations. Materials include letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, and oral-history interviews with full transcriptions. The collection spans from 1900-2014.

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.

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,A black and white photo of Melnea Cass. She is seen from the shoulders up. She is an older Black woman with short hair and is wearing glasses, a brooch, and a pearl necklace 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. 

An article from the Roxbury-based Bay State Banner about Black migration within the city of Boston. 

Finding aid for the Roxbury Historical Society Records at Northeastern University. The records include the Byron Rushing papers and the Boston Cable Television Conference (audiovisual), Circle Associates, Massachusetts Black Caucus, Roxbury Action Program, United Black Appeal, and United Front records.

Article from the Boston Women's Heritage Trail on Melnea Cass, iconic activist and the "First Lady of Roxbury."

Image Above, Top: Black and white 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 portrait of activist Dr. Melnea Cass, the "First Lady of Roxbury." Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

From 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans gathered across the United States and Canada to participate in political meetings held at the state and national levels. A cornerstone of Black organizing in the nineteenth century, these “Colored Conventions” brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights. This digital exhibit explores where these organizers lived and stayed, including the Beacon Hill neighborhood. 

An article from the West End Museum on Black Boston in the 1830s. 

Adelaide Cromwell, the late sociologist who taught at Boston University and founded BU’s African American Studies program in 1969, documented and visualized the West End’s historic Black community in the 1800s.

National Park Service article about Beacon Hill.

From Jacobin magazine and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, this podcast takes place in Boston and follows tenants in public housing through the urban rebellions of the 1960s, busing in the 70s, into the Clinton era. People’s History looks at these moments through the lens of one community: Columbia Point, the largest public housing project in New England. Built on an isolated landfill site next to the Boston city dump, it was the site of major organizing, from welfare rights to a free breakfast program. It was also the first public housing project to be sold off and redeveloped as private “mixed-income” development (and was a model for the federal policy “HOPE VI”)

A pamphlet from the Hyde Park Historical Society highlighting Black historical figures as well as white abolitionists from the neighborhood.

History of slavery in Jamaica Plain from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society

A series of articles from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society, including several ones on the history of enslaved individuals in Jamaica Plain. 

A presentation and infographic that shares City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU)'s rich history of organizing in Boston to build the power of working class and BIPOC communities to fight for systematic change. Founded in 1973, and currently located in The Brewery, City Life is known for its anti displacement organizing, fighting unscrupulous landlords; defending families from foreclosures and evictions. The speakers include Denise Matthews (Co-Executive Director), Alma Chisholm (Board President) and Celine Voyard (Board member). Interpretation services were provided by Gabriela Herrera.

This site showcases materials from various Boston archives selected by graduate students in the History and American Studies departments at UMass Boston. Students conducted archival research on the broad topic of de facto segregation and the integration of Boston Public Schools in Boston .

 

The Harriet Tubman House Memory Project is a Boston Research Center effort from 2020 to 2022 to preserve the legacy of the Harriet Tubman House, which stood at 566 Columbus Avenue in Boston’s South End from 1975 until its demolition in 2020. This project invites visitors to explore the history of the building and the people who worked, learned, and found joy and community within its walls. Here you will find digitized photographs, newsletters, ephemera, oral histories, and other historical records. These materials tell the story of a beloved community hub that served a racially and ethnically diverse neighborhood; the building’s sale sparked a wave of grassroots organizing, and its painful loss reverberates today. In documenting the history of the Harriet Tubman House and United South End Settlements (USES), this project strives to offer testimony of the trauma of displacement, the power of community action and resilience, and the meaning of place in the South End. The Harriet Tubman House Memory Project was designed with past and present staff of USES and community members affiliated with the community coalition I Am Harriet.

A history of the South End from the Harriet Tubman House Memory Project. Sections include Black History in the South End, Redlining, Urban Renewal, and Organizing against Renewal. 

The Public Housing collection at the South End Historical Society contains records related to public housing developments and community organizations actively involved in the oversight and development of public housing in the South End.

The South End Tour starts at Back Bay Station, goes down Massachusetts Avenue, and then works its way back up and across to the Boston Center for the Arts. The tour presents a wide diversity of women, from mid-nineteenth through the twentieth centuries, particularly a flourishing African American community and their organizations. It takes us to two impressive sculptures, crafted by women, honors the area’s immigrant populations including the newest group, the Latino community, and presents the work of women in settlement houses, hospitals, and schools.

Researching Redlining

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. 

Using historic aerial photography, this ongoing project aims to document the destruction of communities of color due to red-lining, “urban renewal,” and freeway construction. Through a series of stark aerial before-and-after comparisons, figure-ground diagrams, and demographic data, this project reveals the extent to which the American city was methodically hollowed out based on race. Cities from all over the U.S. are covered, and Massachusetts coverage includes Boston, Springfield, and Worcester.

An interactive map and online exhibit discussing the history of redlining and segregation in the City of Boston. 

A project of the University of Richmond, Mapping Inequality lets you explore redlining maps and the history of racial and ethnic discrimination in housing policy. It offers overviews of redlining, a database of area descriptions, and related lesson plans. 

Also a project of the University of Richmond, Renewing Inequality uses an interactive map to visualize displacements in this time period and urban renewal more generally.

Image Above: A 1975 map from the Boston Redevelopment Authority identifying places designated for urban renewal.