Book Reading and Reception: A People’s History of the New Boston

People's History of the New BostonWhen: Thursday, October 16, 2014 | 3:00 – 5:00 pm

Where: Point Lounge, Campus Center 3rd Floor, on the campus side, University of Massachusetts Boston

Join the Friends of the Joseph P. Healey Library for a reading from and reception for Jim Vrabel’s new book, A People’s History of the New Boston, published by UMass Press. Barbara Lewis, director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute, will introduce the author.

Books will be available for purchase, and refreshments will be served.

Although 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.

Jim Vrabel is a longtime Boston community activist and historian. He is author of When in Boston: A Time Line & Almanac and Homage to Henry: A Dramatization of John Berryman’s “The Dream Songs.

For disability-related accommodations, including dietary accommodations, please visit www.ada.umb.edu two weeks prior to the event.

UMass Boston Archives staff give presentation at Society of American Archivists annual meeting

Joanne Riley, University Archivist and Curator of Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston (left) and an SAA conference attendee discuss the department's poster.

Joanne Riley, University Archivist and Curator of Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston (left), and SAA conference attendee discuss the department’s poster.

Last week, archivists from University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston headed to Washington, D.C., for the joint annual meeting of the Council of State Archivists (CoSA), the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators (NAGARA), and the Society of American Archivists (SAA). On Thursday and Friday of this year’s conference, called ARCHIVES*RECORDS: Ensuring Access, Andrew Elder, Jessica Holden, and Joanne Riley presented as part of the professional poster session on our efforts to establish successful ongoing relationships with community archives and organizations.

SAA PosterOur poster, titled “University Archives and Community Organizations: Ensuring Access through Collaboration,” looks closely at our ongoing relationship with The Irish Ancestral Research Association (TIARA) and our collaborative efforts to preserve and provide access to 79,000 mortuary records from the Massachusetts Catholic Order of Foresters. Elements of the collaboration included shifting stewardship of the records from the Foresters to TIARA to UMass Boston, integrating TIARA’s efforts in processing and indexing the records into the Archives’ workflow, providing in-person and electronic access to the records, and hosting public events that celebrate the partnership and educate the public about the records. This poster illustrates the lessons learned during the records’ journey from an active business to a community organization to an archives and special collections department at a large, public research university.

View the poster and handout here.


University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston collects materials related to the university’s history, as well as materials that reflect the institution’s urban mission and strong support of community service, notably in collections of records of urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, and local history related to neighboring communities.

University Archives & Special Collections welcomes inquiries from individuals, organizations, and businesses interested in donating materials of an archival nature that that fit within our collecting policy. These include manuscripts, documents, organizational archives, collections of photographs, unique publications, and audio and video media. For more information about donating to University Archives & Special Collections, click here or email library.archives@umb.edu.

Mass. Memories Road Show in the news, accepting applications for 2015

Carolyn Goldstein, interviewed on Chronicle for the Mass. Memories Road Show.

Carolyn Goldstein, interviewed about the Mass. Memories Road Show as part of an episode about UMass Boston for WCBV Boston’s Chronicle. Click the image to view the video.

The Mass. Memories Road Show was featured last week on WCBV Boston’s Chronicle as part of a segment produced on the occasion of the university’s 50th anniversary. The episode included photographs from the collection and recorded footage from a number of Mass. Memories Road Show events, including last year’s stops in Lexington and Provincetown.

Are you interested in bringing a Road Show to your community? We are now seeking applications for events to be held in 2015. The deadline to apply is July 25, 2014, and applicants will be notified in early September. Click here for information about how to apply, or email carolyn.goldstein@umb.edu with any questions.

Volunteers and contributors at the Lexington Mass. Memories Road Show

Volunteers and contributors at the Lexington Mass. Memories Road Show, March 2013

Mark your calendars for our next two events in two Boston neighborhoods:

Allston-Brighton Mass. Memories Road Show
Veronica B. Smith Multi-Service Senior Center
20 Chestnut Hill Avenue
Sunday, October 26, 2014

West End Mass. Memories Road Show
West End Museum 
150 Staniford Street
Saturday, November 15

 


The Mass. Memories Road Show is a statewide digital history project that documents people, places and events in Massachusetts history through family photographs and stories. In partnership with teams of local volunteers, we organize public events to scan family and community photographs and videotape “the stories behind the photos.” The images and videos are indexed and incorporated into an online educational database. Since its launch, the project has gathered more than 8,000 photographs and stories from across the state. It is supported in part by the Patricia C. Flaherty ’81 Endowed Fund at UMass Boston.  

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston was established in 1981 as a repository to collect archival material in subject areas of interest to the university, as well as the records of the university itself. The mission and history of UMass Boston guide the collection policies of University Archives & Special Collections, with the university’s urban mission and strong support of community service reflected in the records of and related to urban planning, social welfare, social action, alternative movements, community organizations, war and social consequence, and local history related to neighboring communities. To learn more, visit blogs.umb.edu/archives.

 

Historian and UMass Boston alumnus Anthony M. Sammarco ’79 publishes Lost Boston

With Lost Boston, historian and UMass Boston alumnus Anthony M. Sammarco ’79 takes readers on a nostalgic journey back in time to visit some of Boston’s  disappeared buildings and places in all their grandeur, before the wrecking ball and decline set in. For information about upcoming book talks featuring Sammarco, click here.

From the 1870s up to the present day, 68 different losses are represented in Lost Boston, including schools, churches, theaters, grand mansions, dockyards, racetracks, parks, stores, hotels, offices, and factories. Organized chronologically starting with the earliest losses and ending with the latest, Lost Boston features much-loved institutions that failed to stand the test of time, along with old-fashioned hotels and sports facilities that were beyond updating or refurbishment. Losses explored include Franklin Place, Boston City Hall, Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Hancock House, Gleason’s Publishing Hall, Fort Hill, Franklin Street, Boston Coliseum, Boylston Market, Merchants Exchange, Haymarket Square, Boston Public Library, Horticultural Hall, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Revere House (Hotel), Huntington Avenue Grounds, Charlestown City Hall, Molasses Tank, Cyclorama, Readville Trotting Park and Race Track, East Boston Airport, Boston Latin School, East Boston Ferries, Braves Field, Massachusetts State Prison, Boston Opera House, Boston Aquarium, The Howard Athenaeum, and Dudley Street Station.

Well known locally for his community service in disseminating local history, Anthony M. Sammarco has donated his archives to University Archives & Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston. Sammarco intends to donate a copy of Lost Boston, along with his research materials and photographs, to University Archives & Special Collections.

For information about upcoming book talks featuring Sammarco, click here. Books will be available for purchase for $18.95 at these events and will be signed by the author.

10th annual Mass History Conference explores the history of women at work in Massachusetts

Contribution by Sarafina Collura to the Waltham Mass. Memories Road Show, an initiative of University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

Contribution by Sarafina Collura to the Waltham Mass. Memories Road Show, an initiative of University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

When: Monday, June 2, 2014 | 9:00 am – 4:00 pm

Where: Hogan Campus Center, College of Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass.

Online registration is open through Friday, May 30th by visiting https://go.masshumanities.org/.

Click here for directions.

On June 2nd, staff and volunteers from historical organizations, public historians, and interested individuals are invited to join with historians from across the state in exploring the history of women at work in Massachusetts at the tenth annual Mass History Conference. This day-long conference will welcome the many small historical organizations that preserve, interpret, and deepen the exploration of Massachusetts history.

The stories of lesser-known women change-makers get lost in the larger narrative of industry, politics and conflict, but the timing is right for an examination of their tales of great and compelling variety, of lives lived with courage and determination. This anniversary conference, Never Done: Interpreting the History of Women at Work in Massachusetts, features noted Harvard scholar Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who will present the keynote.

The Mass History Conference, widely celebrated as the best networking and skill-sharing opportunity for historians of our state culture, is co-presented by Mass Humanities, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Public History Program, the University of Massachusetts Boston Public History and Archives Track, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and Elizabeth & Ned Bacon.

Online registration is open through Friday, May 30th by visiting https://go.masshumanities.org/.