Tag Archives: Columbia Point

Black History Month: Black History at UMass Boston

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Author: Maci Mark, Archives Assistant and graduate student in the Public History MA Program at UMass Boston

Happy Black History Month! Black History Month is celebrated during the month of February every year as a way of celebrating important people and events from across the African diaspora. Here at UMass Boston, we have many collections about the Black history of Boston and our campus. Over the course of the month, we will be highlighting some of these collections and stories.

Students sitting in classroom desks listening to a lecture

Students listening to a lecture in a classroom on the Park Square campus, circa 1965-1974

First founded in 1964, the University of Massachusetts Boston was created to serve the urban population of the City of Boston. UMass Boston was envisioned as a place of education for underserved communities, and to support working class students, first generation students, and those that could not afford the elite private schools which made up the educational offerings in Boston. UMass Boston has served these communities for more than fifty years, including the Black community of Boston. Black students have always been a core part of the campus community and have fought to make change and feel represented on campus. 

Only three years after the university’s establishment, by the 1967-1968 academic year, UMass Boston had 100 Black students out of its 2,600 student population. While 26 Black students out of every 100 is not a lot, especially with the university’s goal of supporting urban students (which at the time meant thousands of Black students), this actually made UMass Boston one of the most racially diverse schools in the country at the time.

Black students on campus quickly formed the Afro-American Student Association to find community and advocate for their needs on campus. The students in this organization, led by Alvin Johnson, led protests and staged a sit-in at the 1970 summer class registration to demand the hiring of more Black tenure-track faculty and more Black students admitted to the university. At this time there was only one Black tenured professor on campus, James Blackwell.

James Blackwell sitting in front of a chalkboard


Professor James Blackwell teaching a class at the Columbia Point campus, circa 1974-1978

Despite being the first and only Black tenured professor on campus, Professor Blackwell had a big impact. He was an early advocate for a Black Studies department on campus, which was established as the Afro-American Studies Department in 1973 (currently the Africana Studies Department). 

The advocacy did not stop in the 1970s. The William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture was founded in 1984. This institute allowed for further research and study into Black life and culture. 

Portrait of Harold Horton

Dr. Harold Horton, the first Associate Director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute, circa 1984-1989

The work that Alvin Johnson started with the Afro-American Student Association in the 1970s continues with the many cultural community groups for Black students that exist on campus today to help students find community and advocate for themselves, including the Black Student Center, Haitian American Society, African Students Union, Ghanaian Student Association, and the UMB NAACP Campus Chapter.

University Archives and Special Collections works to have engaging collections that reflect the history of Black Bostonians and Black students at UMass Boston, including (but not limited to) the recently-donated Mel King papers, the Theresa-India Young papers, the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive, the Reverend Edward B. Blackman papers, and the Robert C. Hayden: Transcripts of oral history interviews with Boston African American railroad workers. Check out these collections to learn more about the Black history of Boston. To learn more about the history of UMass Boston, check out UMass Boston at 50: A Fiftieth-Anniversary History of the University of Massachusetts Boston by Michael Feldberg.

References

Feldberg, Michael. UMass Boston at 50: A Fiftieth-Anniversary History of the University of Massachusetts Boston. Boston: UMass Boston, 2015.

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.

In the Archives: Columbia Point and UMass Boston

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Author: Kayla Allen, Archives Assistant and graduate student in the History MA Program at UMass Boston

Color photograph of the UMass Boston campus as seen from the water

UMass Boston campus on Columbia Point in Dorchester, circa 1974

From the university’s inception in the mid-1960s, UMass Boston trustees started to plan where to put the permanent campus, as Park Square was always intended to be temporary. Originally several sites were considered, including Highland Park in Roxbury, Copley Square, and North Station, but the final choice was Columbia Point. Many students and faculty members disapproved of the decision, while others were pleased and looked forward to the new space. It was a contentious time for all parties involved. Even so, the plan went forward and the construction of our current campus began.

Aerial view of Columbia Point in Dorchester, the Columbia Point Housing Project and the Calf Pasture Pumping Station, circa 1965-1970
Aerial view of the construction of the UMass Boston campus on Columbia Point, circa 1970-1973
Aerial view of Savin Hill Cove, UMass Boston, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, circa 1979

Our University Archives Historic Photographs digital collection consists of more than 3,600 digitized photographs documenting the Columbia Point campus from its creation through 2009. The collection includes aerial shots of the peninsula before, during, and after construction started in 1971. The main structures on the land at the time were the Calf Pasture Pumping Station, Boston College High School, and the Columbia Point Housing Project, all of which are represented in our collection. 

Commencement exercises on the University of Massachusetts Boston campus on Columbia Point, June 6, 1974
View of the celebratory cake and ceremonial podium at the 1977 UMass Boston Open House
College of Education staff on the Columbia Point campus, circa 1977-1985

Our photographs also document events that took place at the Columbia Point campus, including festivals, dinners, commencement ceremonies, receptions, lectures, open houses, and many others. The images show us the buildings on campus and give us a peek into the lives of UMass Boston students, faculty, and staff, both in and out of class.

Sofas and reading cubicles in the Joseph P. Healey Library, circa 1974-1983
Faculty and staff serving food to students during Student Appreciation Day, 2001
Displays along the plaza showcasing different UMass Boston facilities, 2003

We expect our photograph collections to grow as the campus continues to evolve. Check out our University of Massachusetts Boston, historic photographs, 1964-2009 collection to see the photographs we’ve collected so far, as well as the collection’s finding aid.

“Decent Places to Live”: Joe Corcoran and the development of mixed-income housing in Dorchester

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Aerial view of Columbia Point in Dorchester, the Columbia Point Housing Project and the Calf Pasture Pumping Station

Aerial view of Columbia Point in Dorchester, the Columbia Point Housing Project and the Calf Pasture Pumping Station, 1960s.

The mission of University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston includes documenting the history of Columbia Point, the university’s home since 1974. Columbia Point has a long and storied history: it was a farm and calf pasture before and during much of the 19th century; it became the site of a pumping station that was vital to the city’s new sewerage system; it housed Italian prisoners of war during World War II; and, later still, it became the site of the 1,132 unit Columbia Point housing development. (You can learn more about the complex histories of Columbia Point by visiting our research guide and this blog about Columbia Point.)

joe_corcoran

Joseph Corcoran. Courtesy Corcoran Jennison, Inc.

Joseph Corcoran, a pioneer in developing mixed-income housing, has been a transformative influence in the development of the Point, and recently contributed several items of historic and scholarly interest to our Special Collections, including two videos and the digitization rights to the publication A Decent Place to Live. Through these archival contributions, Corcoran continues his strong support of the university. He is a member of the William H. J. Kennedy Society of the UMass Boston Founders Circle and, through the Joseph E. Corcoran Endowed Excellence Fund, provides an annual award to a faculty member in the College of Management who has exhibited excellence in teaching, curriculum development and/or research.

Joe Corcoran grew up in a mixed-income neighborhood in Dorchester, the youngest of eight children born to Irish immigrant parents. As he describes in his memoir Wasn’t That a Time! A Corcoran Family Memoir, 1925-1950, the benefits of growing up in a mixed-income neighborhood have inspired his life’s work.

Harbor Point Apartments, ca. 2012

Harbor Point Apartments, ca. 2012. Courtesy Corcoran Jennison, Inc.

In the late 1980s, Corcoran Jennison Companies, the Boston-based development firm he co-founded, undertook the process of converting the failed Columbia Point housing project into a mixed-income community called Harbor Point, which has become a national model for the federal HOPE VI Program. The HOPE VI Program, through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is described as “a National Action Plan to eradicate severely distressed public housing.” Corcoran’s approach to housing development has always been to focus on working from the very beginning with the primary stakeholders in any new development – those who will occupy or otherwise be affected by the construction of housing or business real estate. When developers Corcoran, Mullins, Jennison, Inc., forged a partnership with the residents to redevelop the Columbia Point projects, only 350 units were occupied, with the rest boarded-up and condemned. Thirty years later, Harbor Point on the Bay is a 1,283-unit mixed-income community still managed by this unique developer/resident partnership and is viewed as a model of mixed-income housing.

Corcoran recently donated two historic films to University Archives & Special Collections, both of which describe the development of Harbor Point, and both of which have now been digitized and are available to all online. The first, Harbor Point, Boston is a five-minute video commissioned by Corcoran Jennison and produced by Cambridge Studios.  |  Harbor Point, Boston from UMass Boston Archives on Vimeo.

A second film, Point of Change (21’52”) was produced and directed by Deborah Dorsey of Cambridge Studios in 1990, and includes more extensive footage from around Boston, as well as interviews with residents, government agency officials, and others.  |  Point of Change from UMass Boston Archives on Vimeo.

In addition to the above films, Corcoran recently shared the digitization rights for the book A Decent Place to Live: From Columbia Point to Harbor Point (2000, Northeastern University Press) with University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston. A Decent Place to Live, written by Jane Roessner, who also freely shared her rights in the book, is the redevelopment story of Boston’s Columbia Point, America’s first federal public housing project to be converted into private mixed-income housing in a 50/50 partnership with the existing residents and a private developer. The book chronicles the redevelopment process from its inception to completion, and navigates the long road of redevelopment.

A Decent Place to Live is an account of an historic transformation as well as a reference point for those involved in community redevelopment today and into the future. Thanks to the support of Joe Corcoran, University Archives & Special Collections was able to digitize A Decent Place to Live and to make the work openly available to researchers, students, scholars, journalists and the general public.

For more information about collections related to the history of Columbia Point in University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston, click 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.

Making a History: Columbia Point photographs and memories now available

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Nate, 1970. Photographer: Deborah Goldberg. Contributor: Deborah Goldberg.

Nate, 1970. Photographer: Deborah Goldberg. Contributor: Deborah Goldberg.

The photographs, stories, and videos collected as part of “Making a History of Columbia Point: A Participatory Exhibition” are now available for research online at openarchives.umb.edu. The event, held at the Harbor Point Clubhouse on Saturday, May 9, 2015, was the culminating practicum project of Professor Jane Becker’s graduate public history seminar (History 625) at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The students presented an informal temporary display exploring the history of this part of Dorchester, and they invited community members, past and present, to help tell the story. Attendees added events to an historical timeline and defined and identified the locations of important places in the community. Ten participants brought a total of 100 photographs and other documents to be scanned and added to the digital collections at UMass Boston. Together, these materials provide a variety of perspectives on how Columbia Point changed from the 1950s to the 1990s.

Conways after First Communion, St. Christopher's Church. 1950s

Eileen Conway’s First Communion, 1960. “My mother worked hard to keep us well dressed. Pictured: Eileen Conway, my mother Marie Conway, and Frank Conway.” Contributor: Jim Conway.

Many former residents shared memories of attending St. Christopher’s Church over the years. They contributed photographs of first communions, Easter Sunday, and other religious occasions. Images of parish sports teams and community events organized by the church are also included.

The Sisters of Notre Dame are documented in many of the photographs gathered. Project Care and Concern, an organization dedicated to serving low-income individuals and families, and the Notre Dame Montessori School, which operated for decades in the basement of St. Christopher’s Church, are documented in the collection.

Easter Junior Gems, 1963 ir 1964.

Easter Junior Gems, 1963 or 1964. “Favorite place ever, PERIOD!!! Pictured, from left to right: Leo Manning, Tom ‘Greek’ Stephens, Joe Steverman, Paul ‘Red’ Chadwick, Jimmy Carter, [?] Donahue, and Peter Connell. Location: probably 100 Monticello Avenue.” Contributor: Jim Chadwick.

In video interviews, contributors shared memories of growing up in the public housing projects. Daily life in the neighborhood is represented in photographs of “gangs” of teenage boys dressed in uniform sweaters and images of older members of the community attending Christmas parties at the Columbia Point Senior Center.

Eleven black-and-white photographs document the early days of the Phillips Brooks House Association summer school on Columbia Point. Through this program, launched in the late 1960s, a number of students from Harvard University lived in the housing project and served as “big brothers” to neighborhood children.

For a reflection on this project by Paige Kinder, one of the students in the class, please visit www.archivespublichistory.org.

25th anniversary celebration at Notre Dame Montessori School, 1994. Contributor: Sister Elizabeth Calcagni.

25th anniversary celebration at Notre Dame Montessori School, 1994. Contributor: Sister Elizabeth Calcagni.

For questions about the practicum project and the public history of Columbia Point, please contact Carolyn Goldstein at carolyn.goldstein@umb.edu and Jane Becker at jane.becker@umb.edu.

Explore the images and stories gathered at this event here.

For more resources on the history and development of Columbia Point, please visit umb.libguides.com/columbia-point.

University Archives and Special Collections at UMass Boston is actively seeking to build its Dorchester and neighborhood collections. Do you have collections related to the history and development of Columbia Point that you are interested in donating to the Archives? If so, please review our policies and guidelines for collection donations and contact us at library.archives@umb.edu.

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.

Interested in the history of Columbia Point?

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See page 21 of the presentation by historian Nancy Seasholes and find out how the pictured configuration of land became the Columbia Point of today. (Image courtesy University Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston)

See page 21 of the presentation by Nancy Seasholes and find out how this pictured configuration of land became the Columbia Point of today. (Image courtesy University Archives and Special Collections, UMass Boston)

Columbia Point has been the home of the University of Massachusetts Boston since 1974 (you can learn more about that move and about the site selection process in our archival collections), but this peninsula in Dorchester Bay has a documented history of use that goes back for centuries.

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston recently posted a presentation by historian Nancy S. Seasholes to our digital collections site about the history of Columbia Point. The presentation, which explains and shows Columbia Point in its many configurations over the years, is based on a lecture given at UMass Boston by Nancy Seasholes as part of Geography Awareness Week. The lecture was sponsored by the Earth and Geographic Sciences Club, which was advised by Professor Richard Gelpke. The lecture and presentation draw from Dr. Seasholes’s highly regarded book Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (MIT Press, 2003).

Click here to view the presentation and to learn about the surprisingly long and varied history of Columbia Point.

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.