Thursday, Oct. 30 – I Can See For Miles: The Past, Present, and Future of the Nantucket Field Station

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Nantucket Field StationWhen: Thursday, October 30, 2014 | Noon – 2:00 pm

Where: Campus Center, 3rd floor Ballroom, section C (3550C), University of Massachusetts Boston

Light lunch and refreshments will be provided.

The Nantucket Field Station was donated to the University of Massachusetts in 1963 and became a part of the teaching and research activities of UMass Boston when the university first opened its doors in 1965. At this event, part of celebrations around UMass Boston’s 50th anniversary, speakers will discuss the early history of the Field Station, as well as current and future teaching and research activities on the island.

Nantucket Field StationSpeakers include:

  • Richard Gelpke, Professor of Geographic Science (retired), UMass Boston
  • Sarah Oktay, Director of the Nantucket Field Station, UMass Boston
  • Special guest lightning-round panelists, each charged with briefly describing their work with the Field Station, include Ginger Andrews, who has a family connection to the Nantucket Field Station; Robyn Hannigan, Dean of the School for the Environment; Jim Lentowski, Executive Director of the Nantucket Conservation Foundation; Conevery Valencius, Associate Professor of History; Jack Wiggin, Director of the Urban Harbors Institute; and Roberta Wollons, Chair and Professor of History.

Light lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Free and open to the public. RSVP to library.archives@umb.edu.

Learn more about this event here.

Co-sponsored by the School for the Environment, the Nantucket Field Station, the Urban Harbors Institute, and the Friends of the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

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

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

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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.

Appreciating Difference: Latest issue of the Trotter Review available on ScholarWorks

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DeAma Battle, an artistic director and choreographer who has researched Africa-derived dances for decades, performs traditional steps while clad in the garb of her ancestral continent. Her studies and travels have documented steps and movements common to dances done in Africa and different countries in the Diaspora. Photo courtesy of DeAma Battle.

DeAma Battle, artistic director and choreographer. Photo courtesy of DeAma Battle.

The most recent issue of the Trotter Review, now available on ScholarWorks, explores how immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa wrestle with, define and adapt their identity after they arrive in the United States. Original research articles look at Haitian youth, African fathers and the children of Caribbean immigrants.

The Trotter Review has been published since 1987 by the William Monroe Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Full issues of the Review are available on ScholarWorks, the institutional repository for scholarship and research out of the University.

Apart from an introduction by Barbara Lewis, director of the Trotter Institute, the contents of this issue, titled “Appreciating Difference,” include:

A couple listens during a 2005 meeting of African immigrants with Marina Dimitrijevic, a member of Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. Courtesy of the office of Marina Dimitrijevic. Reprinted under Creative Commons.

A couple listens during a 2005 meeting of African immigrants with Marina Dimitrijevic, a member of Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors. Courtesy of the office of Marina Dimitrijevic. Reprinted under Creative Commons.

To view the full issue, and to explore back issues of this publication, click here.

ScholarWorks is the University of Massachusetts Boston’s online institutional repository for scholarship and research. ScholarWorks serves as a publishing platform, a preservation service, and a showcase for the research and scholarly output of members of the UMass Boston community. ScholarWorks is a service of the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston.

Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) records: Now available for research

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PRIM&R 20th Anniversary poster

PRIM&R 20th Anniversary poster, 1984

University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston is pleased to announce the availability of the Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) records (1972-2008) for research.

Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research (PRIM&R) is a non-profit organization that was formed in 1974 in response to increasingly complex and sensitive problems facing research and related clinical practice, such as the indictment of four doctors conducting fetal research at the Boston City Hospital, the Controlled Substances Act, and the United States Public Health Services Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, resulting in the passage of the National Research Act in 1974 and enacting regulations governing the protection of human subjects and mandating institutional review boards (IRBs).

This collection, spanning 39 linear feet, documents the activities of PRIM&R and the organization’s longtime executive director (from 1975-2014), Joan Rachlin, covering the years 1972 through 2008. In particular, the material in this collection documents the planning and arrangement of conferences, including research and the study of relevant topics such as the ethics of medical study and research on human subjects and animals. The collection also documents the member activities of ARENA, the board of directors of PRIM&R, and WISH-net.

The PRIM&R collection includes original documents, correspondence, photocopies, notes, conference proceedings, newsletters, pamphlets, books, serials, posters, floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, Betacam tapes, cassettes, mini-DV cassettes, and micro cassettes. The resource PRIM&R Through the Years: Three Decades of Protecting Human Subjects, which consists of almost thirty years of key talks from PRIM&R conferences, can be found in the special collections of the University Archives & Special Collections department, and in the Healey Library main stacks.

If you have any questions or if you would like to schedule a time to explore the collection, email library.archives@umb.edu or call 617-287-5469.

View the finding aid for this collection.

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.

Reflecting on the Boston Schools Case: Archival collections in the Healey Library

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Judge W. Arthur Garrity signing the deed of gift for his chamber papers with UMass Boston Chancellor Sherry Penney. As a result over 60 boxes of files from the 1972 desegregation court case, Morgan v. the Boston School Committee, were donated to the Joseph P. Healey Library. Archivist Elizabeth Mock in background.

Judge W. Arthur Garrity signing the deed of gift for his chamber papers with UMass Boston Chancellor Sherry Penney. As a result over 60 boxes of files from the 1972 desegregation court case, Morgan v. the Boston School Committee, were donated to the Joseph P. Healey Library. Archivist Elizabeth Mock in background.

Busing is in the news.

The Boston Globe.

The Boston Herald.

WGBH.

And for good reason. It was 40 years ago this month that court-ordered busing started in Boston. Busing was an effort to desegregate public schools in Boston and Massachusetts and was the result of federal court case Morgan v. Hennigan, 379 F. Supp. 410 (1974), commonly known as the Boston Schools Case.

Morgan v. Hennigan, 379 F. Supp. 410 (1974) was a complex and legally entangled class action suit against the state of Massachusetts and the Boston School Committee that evolved from a report published in April 1965 by an advisory committee appointed by the State Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education to study racial segregation in Massachusetts’ public schools. On March 15, 1972, the plaintiffs filed a complaint with the First District Court of Massachusetts, charging the state and Boston officials with maintaining a segregated school system that denied black students equal educational opportunities. After preliminary hearings, the case went to trial before Federal District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., who was selected by a random process to preside over the case. The trial lasted about fifteen days and on June 21, 1974, Judge Garrity filed a 152-page opinion with the clerk of the court. In his lengthy opinion, the Judge ruled that the School Committee of the City of Boston had “intentionally brought about and maintained racial segregation” in the Boston public schools. The opinion also required the School Committee to use a temporary desegregation plan (court-ordered busing) for the 1974-1975 school year and ordered the Committee to begin formulating a permanent plan. By January 1975, the School Committee had failed to present an adequate desegregation plan to the court. As a result, the court assumed an active role in the formulation of the desegregation remedy and began to oversee implementation of court-ordered desegregation in the Boston public schools for the next fifteen years.

Last Sunday, the Boston Globe published a meticulously researched and compelling look at the history busing and school desegregation in Boston. Through interviews and archival research, the feature story explores issues of desegregation, but also broader issues of parenting and education. Earlier this month, the Herald published an opinion piece by Ray Flynn, who served as mayor of Boston from 1984 to 1993, about the busing ruling.

Spring 1981 issue of Mosaic, a publication by the students of South Boston High School

Spring 1981 issue of Mosaic, a publication by the students of South Boston High School

We have a number of collections in University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston that would certainly prove beneficial to researchers and writers looking at the history of busing and desegregation in Boston.

Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. donated his chamber papers to University Archives & Special Collections in the Healey Library at UMass Boston on December 8, 1998. Chambers papers are the personal property of the judge, who retains the right to make the final decision regarding their preservation and management, and the papers in this collection constitute a day-to day file documentation of the Boston Schools Case.

In the papers of sociologist and academic Robert Dentler is information documenting his role in drafting a desegregation plan for Boston’s schools, as well as published articles and papers studying the impacts of busing in Boston.

University Archives & Special Collections also holds the papers of the Center for Law and Education related to the Boston school desegregation case. The center served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs.

Finally, UASC holds the records of Mosaic. Founded by Michael Tierney and Dan Terris, Mosaic was launched at South Boston High School in 1980 in response to the effects of court-ordered desegregation on the high school. Led by professional writers and photographers, students produced stories and photographs about themselves and their communities. A yearly anthology was published from 1980 to 1988.

I hope the stories keep coming.

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.