In spring semester 2021, students in “Interpreting History in Public: Approaches to Public History Practice” (HIST 625) collaborated with the Boston National Historical Park and Revolutionary Spaces to create a web exhibit on the multiple social, political and cultural movements focused on equality led by generations of Bostonians on the same landscape where the events leading to the American Revolution played out in the 1760s and 1770s.
The team brought the methods and skills of public historians to the documentary, material, and visual historical evidence to narrate this history for NPS audiences. This web-based exhibition is installed on a WordPress platform created for and managed by the NPS. Corridor to Revolution connects a curated collection of historic artifacts and documents to social, political and cultural activism performed in the Boston landscape spanning the 18th to the 20th centuries.
This web exhibition explores the struggles for social and racial justice, political action, equality, and cultural change. Short articles on featured topics that draw on a wide range of primary source materials offer audiences new ways to consider the “revolutionary landscapes” of Boston, and the city’s role in inspiring social and political change.
Corridor to Revolutions encourages us to reconsider the meanings of “revolution” and how these meanings shape our lives, past, and present. In this project, our project team joined Boston’s 2020 activities in commemorating and interpreting the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. The colonial town proved a crucial center to the events of the American Revolution, witnessing meetings, protests, and even violence in the 1760s and 1770s. Today’s Washington Street, leading from Downtown Crossing to Old South Meeting House, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall at Dock Square, served as the core corridor of Revolutionary Boston. In 2020, another generation of Bostonians engaged in protests, gatherings, and even violent confrontations on the very same ground. The 250th anniversary of the American Revolution is not simply an occasion to remember what happened 250 years ago, but an opportunity to reflect upon the past 250 years that leads to our current moment. For 250 years, generation after generation of Bostonians came to this same corridor to protest, meet, and fight their own revolution.