2017 – Page 6 – Public History at UMass Boston

March 3, 2017Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

ILL COMPOSED: SICKNESS, GENDER & RECIPES IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

by Olivia Weisser

When we get sick, it is fairly common to look to others’ experiences to make sense of what ailment we have, where we got it, and when we might recover. The interesting thing about the 1600s is that women made these sorts of comparisons more frequently than men.

There are several explanations for this pattern, which I explore in my book, Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England (Yale University Press, 2015). The explanation I want to discuss here involves recipes. And that’s because recipes taught users to compare themselves to other people.

While men documented medical matters in all kinds of genres of writing, such as casebooks and treatises, recipes were the prime mode by which literate early modern women recorded and shared medical information.

One of the earliest examples of women’s using recipes to compare themselves is the Recipe Book of Lady Ann Fanshawe (view the entire digitized book on line). Between 1651-7017, Lady Ann Fanshawe compiled an extensive collection of “cookery and medical receipts.” Fanshawe’s book lists names next to recipes for treating all kinds of conditions, such as bloody flux and the bite of a mad dog.

Some women inserted the name of the person who provided or recommended a recipe. On this page of Fanshawe’s book, for instance, Lady Beadles, Kenelm Digby, and “My Mother” are written in the margins. Hillary Nunn and Rebecca Laroche discuss the authorship of these inscriptions in this post of the Recipes Project.)

Recipe book kept by Ann Fanshawe (ca.1600), which lists treatments for various conditions. Image credit: Wellcome Library, London, Lady Ann Fanshawe, Recipe Book, MS 7113. — Recipe book kept by Ann Fanshawe, which lists treatments for various conditions. Image credit: Wellcome Library, London, Lady Ann Fanshawe, Recipe Book, MS 7113.

We also see Fanshawe’s own name, which suggests that she tested her recipes to see whether they were worthwhile. As Elaine Leong has discussed in another post, Fanshawe crossed out the recipes that didn’t work.

Some women noted others’ experiences alongside recipes in even more explicit ways. Writing in 1674 in a cookbook now held at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Susannah Packe included the following note below a cure for convulsions: “Approved by Ma:Sa: for all her Children was very successful.” Today, viewers may pursue each page of Packe’s digitized cookbook here.

Assigning authorship or naming someone who benefited from a recipe proved its worth, and also provided a way for readers to evaluate their own conditions. Packe and Fanshawe compared their own experiences to those of the men and women listed in the margins of their books.

When Elizabeth Hastings learned that her sister-in-law was sick in 1731, she penned a letter almost entirely devoted to the healing properties of snail water. This letter is now housed at the Huntington Library in California (HA 4741). She included a receipt for preparing the water, which is now lost, but may have involved distilling a pasty mixture of crushed snails, milk, mint, nutmeg, and dates.

She also included directions for using the water (one spoonful taken with two to three spoonfuls of spa water) and even sent a bottle in the post so that her sister-in-law could “make a tryale of it.” She also listed people she knew who found the snail water useful. “Lady Ramsden from whom I had it has known surprizing Cases in Wastings of the Flesh,” she wrote. Also, “my Sister Ann’s servant Mrs. Dove is one instance who I believe would not have been now alive but for it.” This communal production, circulation, and validation of medical knowledge taught women to assess their bodies by looking to the words and experiences of others.

Why did women look to others to evaluate their ailing bodies more frequently than men? Recipes were not an all-female genre of writing, after all. Men wrote and collected them too. Recipes, however, are one of the only forms of medical writing in the period that substantial numbers of women authored. They became the prime mode by which literate early modern women recorded and shared medical information. Perhaps, then, recipes helped teach women in early modern England to look to others’ bodies as a way of better assessing their own.

For more about gender, illness, and healthcare in early modern England, check out Olivia’s book: Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England.

Olivia Weisser, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Olivia Weisser is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her first book, Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender, and Belief in Early Modern England, was published by Yale University Press in 2015. It explores health and healing in the 1600s and 1700s from the patient’s perspective. She is at work on a new project on the history of venereal disease. Follow her on Twitter @OliviaWeisser.

March 1, 2017Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Reconfiguring Women’s History Month: Beyond Milestones & Margins

After repeated petitions for nearly a decade by the National Women’s History Project, Congress designated March as Women’s History Month in 1987. Each subsequent year, the President of the US has issued a special proclamation labeling March Women’s History Month (WHM) and explaining its purpose.

Image of poster featuring the now iconic "Rosie the Riveter," created by J. Howard Miller. — Image of poster featuring the now iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” created by J. Howard Miller. Poster used by the War Production Coordinating Committee. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

“During Women’s History Month,” Barack Obama’s 2016 WHM proclamation underscored, “we remember the trailblazers of the past, including the women who are not recorded in our history books, and we honor their legacies by carrying forward the valuable lessons learned from the powerful examples they set.”((As of this posting, March 1, 2017, the White House Office of the Press Secretary had not yet released a WHM proclamation by Donald Trump.))

Despite its good intention–to set aside time to celebrate women’s contributions to social, cultural and political history–WHM has provoked scathing criticism from men and women, conservatives and radicals, young and old, since its inception. Some note that the themes of WHM and the annual presidential proclamations reinforce traits, such as domesticity and selflessness, associated with stereotypes and traditional constructs of white, middle-class femininity. Ronald Regan’s 1987 WHM proclamation underscored that, “most importantly, as women take part in the world of work, they also continue to embrace and nurture the family as they have always done.”

Celebrating women’s past accomplishments under one unifying theme each year can trivialize and attempt to homogenize womanhood. By focusing on exceptional figures and important milestones, some accuse, WHM endorses a narrative that “keeps women of color on the margins.” It oversimplifies diverse experiences and, in some cases, ignores how race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and age, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, political beliefs, and geographic location affect “womanhood.”

“Women’s past accomplishments (and failures) deserve to be studied, appreciated, criticized, and otherwise actively engaged—not passively cheered in a banal annual celebration.”((Karen Swallow Prior, “The End of Women’s History Month” The Atlantic (March 1, 2013). ))

Guerrilla Girls online logo. © Guerrilla Girls, 2016.

The Guerrilla Girls–a group of feminist activist artists who work to expose sexual and racial discrimination–challenge that “assigning commemorative months to social issues has become another form of tokenism.”

“What happens the rest of the year?” their “Pop Quiz” poster asks viewers. Their answer: “Discrimination.”

Poster, "Guerrilla Girls’ Pop Quiz," 1990. — Poster, “Guerrilla Girls’ Pop Quiz,” 1990. © Guerrilla Girls, 1990. A print of the poster is currently part of the exhibition, “Political Intent,” Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Image courtesy of Guerrilla Girls.

More recently, in 2013, The Atlantic, while praising the study of women in history, castigated Women’s History Month. Designating a separate month or week to commemorate gender, race, or any cultural group, the magazine argued, perpetuates marginalization. Author Karen Swallow Prior quipped, “If history is the marathon, Women’s History Month is merely the cheering from the sidelines.”((Karen Swallow Prior, “The End of Women’s History Month” The Atlantic (March 1, 2013).))

Where do you stand in the intellectual debate over Women’s History Month and other commemorative months?

Graduate students, faculty, and staff in the history department at UMass Boston explore the unique experiences, roles, accomplishments, and failures of women, individually and collectively, throughout history. Every semester, we undertake some research on women at the local, national, and international level. This year, during WHM, we’ll share some of that research on this site.

Professor Heidi Gengenbach learning to winnow pounded peanuts, with Susanna Ntimba, in Facazisse, Mozambique, 1995.

We’ll travel through time and across the globe, sharing research about gender, the political economy of food and women’s lives in Mozambique; the link between shame, sexuality and witchcraft in colonial Dorchester; the connection between gender and perceptions/experiences of illness in 17th- and 18th-century England; and the history of women and tattooing.

Ruth Batson addresses crowd of civil rights activists, ca.1961. Reproduced courtesy of Schlesinger Library. Further reproduction prohibited.

We’ll also examine the civil rights activism of Bostonians Ruth Batson and Grace Lorch; and leadership of political conservatives, including Louise Day Hicks, in the 20th century. We’ll share research about unique experiences of whaling women in New Bedford, and much more. Stay tuned!

February 26, 2017Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

FROM THE CITY TO THE SUBURBS: VOLUNTARY SCHOOL DESEGREGATION THROUGH BOSTON’S METCO PROGRAM

By: Corinne Zaczek Bermon

In 1974, a young boy named Kevin Tyler stepped off his bus on the first day of school.((Name changed as request of former METCO student.)) As the Kevin looked out at the area surrounding his new school, he could only think that everything was foreign and weird. Although he was only ten miles from home, the Roxbury native thought that suburbia was another world. Gone were the noises from the street and common spaces and in their place were fences, private backyards, and white faces. Although it smelled cleaner, it wasn’t exactly pleasant to Kevin as the fresher air “felt weird to [his] nose.” The white students around him sounded strange and bland when they spoke, not in the expressive style he were used to in Roxbury. But even on his first day of school, Kevin could see that life in the suburbs was easier, charmed even.((Susan Eaton, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 218-219.))

Many METCO students experienced a disconnect after they disembarked the buses that brought them to their suburban schools. Perhaps more profoundly than anyone, these young students saw the consequences of the deep racial and class divide that characterized Boston. The suburbs may be close geographically to the metropolitan area, but as Robert observed, they were worlds apart.

So how did students of color end up at schools in the suburbs? As we have passed the fortieth anniversary of busing for school desegregation, it is important to note, that voluntary busing existed before Morgan v. Hennigan mandated it, and still exists today as the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity or, as it is commonly know, METCO.

Even after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, de facto segregation remained prevalent in both the northern and southern US schools. In 1967 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a pamphlet titled “Schools Can Be Desegregated,” which made several statements regarding segregated schools in the US:

Racial isolation in the public schools is intense and is growing worse.

Negro children suffer serious harm when they are educated in racially segregated schools, whatever the origin of that segregation. They do not achieve as well as other children; their aspirations are more restricted than those of other children; and they do not have as much confidence that they can influence their own futures.

White children in all-white schools are also harmed and frequently are ill prepared to live in a world of people from diverse social, economic, and cultural background.((U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, “Schools Can be Desegregated” (Washington, D.C.: Clearinghouse Publication No. 8, June 1967) 1.))

A Bird's Eye View from Within-As We See It by the staff and board of Operation Exodus — “A Bird’s Eye View from Within – As We See It,” report on Operation Exodus, 1965. Image courtesy Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections. Full report online.

Faced with the unresponsive and all-white Boston School Committee’s stance towards de facto segregation in Boston schools, concerned parents and activists founded “Operation Exodus” through Roxbury’s Freedom House in 1965 as a voluntary way to desegregate Boston Public Schools. In its first year, 400 African American students from Roxbury and Dorchester were bused to the predominantly white, but under enrolled, Faneuil School in Back Bay. In 1966, Operation Exodus was renamed the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO). Immediately, Black students faced the problem of how to address race while part of an expressly integration-based program. As Susan Eaton, Ed.D., expert in racial and economic inequality in public education, discovered, “neither [black nor white students] talked to the other about race – the very thing that appeared to be separating them. As a result, race frequently felt to the black students like a family secret. To keep life going smoothly, everyone compliantly locked the race subject away. It was too potent to open, to delicate to touch.”((Eaton, 81.)) The attitude towards race as a subject to be avoided in some ways reflected the outcry against METCO in the city.

The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. program created controversy in nearly every town to which it bused black urban students.

Photograph of black and white students sitting together in a classroom in Boston, circa 1973. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives.

While some suburbanites welcomed the program as a way to expose their children to a more diverse group of classmates while also assisting underprivileged urban students, others did not focus on the ideological mission of METCO. Instead, they considered the financial costs of the program, the potential negative impact on schools, and the needs of their own children to be more important than minimally integrating their school systems. Others accused METCO of reverse racism for primarily busing African American students rather than poor white students. During the 1970s busing crisis within Boston, the program exposed divisions and resentments between suburbs and the city and within the suburbs themselves. Many began to question the value of integration as well as its effectiveness. With the potential costs to each town and to each taxpayer, residents of both the city and suburbs wondered, was the ideological goal of integration a worthwhile endeavor?

The online exhibit, “Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO): Solving Racial Imbalance in Boston Public Schools,” created by graduate students Kristin Harris (MA American Studies, 2015) and Corinne Zaczek Bermon (MA American Studies, 2015; MA History Archives Track, 2017) explores the founding of the organization and the effects it had as a voluntary busing program rather than the controversial “forced busing.”

Using the METCO collection at Northeastern University, Harris and Bermon combed through nearly 144 boxes to find the story of METCO. They hand selected documents that highlighted the difficulties METCO had in funding despite support from the Board of Education and how parents stayed involved in the program through parent councils to keep their children safe and in the program.

This exhibit tells the story of the other side of the busing crisis in 1974-1975. Despite the ongoing violence and intimidation happening in city schools such as South Boston High School and Charlestown High School, METCO students had been quietly and determinedly attended suburban schools through their own busing program. Their stories counteract the narrative that all student busing for desegregation was fraught with protests and violence. The METCO program today still serves as a model for the country as to how to racially balance schools.

Visit the full exhibit to read more about METCO’s beginning and see how parent councils were involved closely with the host schools.

February 22, 2017Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

“A Great Woman, Great Leader & Great Bostonian:” Melnea Cass

Though she was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1896, Melnea A. Cass devoted her life to making the city of Boston a better, more equitable place to live.

Melnea Cass speaking at the Boston Massacre Commemoration, March 5, 1976. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives. See digitized photos from Boston City Archives here.

“She was a great person–a great woman. . . . A great leader of her community. . . and a great Bostonian.” ~ Mayor Kevin H. White, 1978

The Cass family moved to Boston’s South End when Cass was five years old and, three years later, when her mother died, Melnea Cass moved to Newburyport, a small suburb north of Boston, where she was raised by her aunt. After attending a parochial high school in Virginia, Cass returned to Boston where she spent the remainder of her life striving to promote social justice and civil rights in the city.

Throughout the 1920s, when Cass was in her early twenties, she helped black women register to vote in Massachusetts. In her thirties, Cass became a community advocate and leader. She helped found the Boston chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first labor organization led by African Americans.

Because Cass was especially active in community-based activism in the South End and Roxbury, she was affectionately nicknamed the “First Lady of Roxbury.” Working alongside social workers Muriel and Otto Snowden, Cass helped establish Freedom House in 1949. The nonprofit organization began a community-based group advocating for the African American community in Roxbury. Today, Freedom House continues to improve education and relations between racial, ethnic, and religious groups in the city.

Cass championed social justice and rights of African Americans in Boston and served as a leader of several local institutions and causes including the Mayor’s Citizen’s Advisory Committee on Minority Housing and the Harriet Tubman House. When Cass was in her early fifties, John Collins, then Mayor of Boston, appointed her to the Action for Boston Community Development, making her its only female charter member. She served as the Boston president of the NAACP from 1962 until 1964, and in the mid-1970s she was appointed chairperson for the Massachusetts Advisory Committee.

Melnea Cass receiving an honorary doctorate from Northeastern University in 1969. Image courtesy of Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections.

In 1969, when she was 72 years of age, Northeastern University awarded Cass an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree, in recognition for her community-based activism.

Melnea Cass played an active role in community leadership until the end of her life. When she died in December 1978, Boston’s mayor, Kevin H. White, wrote a poignant eulogy that highlighted her tireless, life-long devotion to social justice and healing “the rift between the races and provide for a better life for black Americans.” He noted, “her life was so connected with the life of this city… it is difficult to imagine Boston without her.”

Eulogy for Melnea A. Cass, written by Mayor Kevin White, December, 1978. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives.

Interested in learning more about Cass and her work? Check out local archives! Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections houses the Melnea A. Cass papers. The collection contains biographical information and awards, and photographs documenting her work with community improvement and civil rights organizations. Northeastern University also houses the Freedom House Photographs, which are digitized, as well as the Freedom House, Inc. records.

Boston City Archives also holds records related to Melnea Cass’s life and work. In fall 2016, graduate student Monica Haberny completed an internship at Boston City Archives where she discovered materials about Cass in the “Boston 200” collection and Mayor Kevin H. White records. The latter have recently been digitized and are available online. Check out the fully searchable, newly digitized collections at Boston City Archives.

Cass’s legacy lives on in Boston; in Roxbury, Melnea Cass Boulevard was named in her honor and she is commemorated on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.

February 19, 2017Heidi Gengenbach No Comments

Caught in the Crossfire: Students’ Reactions to Busing in Boston

On December 11, 1974, Michael Faith, a 17-year old student at South Boston High School, was stabbed by an 18-year old African American student while walking in the corridor to his second period class.

Excerpt of police log on October 8, 1974, documenting violence reported at Boston Public Schools between 10:30 am and 12:35 pm. The report for the two-hour period totaled 8 pages. Image courtesy Boston City Archives.

Violence erupted and race-related attacks escalated in Boston’s public schools from the first week of court-ordered busing that September.

On a daily basis many African American students, teacher’s aids, and bus drivers were pelted with rocks and bottles, struck with bats, beaten with fists, and threatened, as this excerpt of a police log for a 2-hour period indicates.

All students In Boston Public Schools (BPS) were affected by the violent reactions to busing on some level. Those who weren’t assaulted physically often witnessed or heard about brutal attacks that occurred in their, or nearby, schools. Student absenteeism skyrocketed in many schools as a result. How did students react to the atmosphere of violence and fear during the years busing was used to desegregate BPS?

Letter from 3rd grade student to Mayor Kevin White, telling him he wants the violence between blacks and whites to stop. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives. Rights status is not evaluated.

The online exhibit, “What About the Kids? A Look Into the Students’ Perspectives on School Desegregation,” created by Krystle Beaubrun (History, 2015) and Lauren Prescott* (Public History and Archives, 2016) explores opinions and reactions students had to what was commonly dubbed “forced busing” in Boston.

Using collections at Boston City Archives and UMass Boston’s Archives & Special Collections, Beaubrun and Prescott scoured hundreds of letters written to Kevin White–then mayor of Boston–and W. Arthur Garrity–the federal judge who ordered that schools be integrated through busing–by students.

Poem by young student to Mayor Kevin White. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives. Rights status is not evaluated. — Poem written by elementary school student to Mayor Kevin White in December, 1974–four months after Phase I (busing) of desegregating BPS was implemented. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives. Rights status is not evaluated.

They selected a sampling of letters written by students–in elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in Boston and across on the country–sharing their unique reactions to busing as a way to desegregate BPS. Many younger students expressed confusion about the violence and prayed for its end. Some offered the adults suggestions on how to improve the situation.

Their exhibit captures the unique reasons high school juniors and seniors opposed “forced busing.” In heartfelt letters to officials, students described how busing about disrupted their place on sports teams, prevented them from partaking in traditions like senior prom, severed relationships they’d built with teachers, and prohibited them from graduating from the school system they’d attended their whole lives.

Despite the violence that erupted in schools during the early years of busing, Beaubrun and Prescott’s exhibit also documents how some black and white students joined together to counteract negativity. Responding to media coverage that generalized South Boston High School students as racists during the 1970s, students Michael Tierney and Danis Terris founded and launched MOSAIC in 1980.

An exhibit annoucement for MOSAIC. Image courtesy of UMass Boston, University Archives & Special Collections. — An exhibit announcement for MOSAIC. Image courtesy of UMass Boston, University Archives & Special Collections. Search or browse full-text issues here.

MOSAIC, a publication produced from 1980-1988, contained autobiographical stories, photographs and poetry from students at South Boston High School. The University Archives & Special Collections at UMass Boston has digitized the full 11-issue run of MOSAIC. Search or browse full-text issues here.

Visit the full exhibit to read more reactions students had to busing. Learn about how officials, clergy, and individuals around the around the world reacted to Boston’s busing crisis in future posts.

*Shortly after graduating with her MA in history, Lauren became the Executive Director of the South End Historical Society. Congratulations, Lauren!