Skip to content

Community Engagement

Ready to Research: Miren Uriarte Research Files

The Miren Uriarte research files are now fully processed and ready for research at the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

A woman with glasses and dark hair pulled back looks at the camera. Behind her is a poster of a music concert in Spanish.
Miren Uriarte, 1979 November 20. Photograph by Wendy Maeda, courtesy of the Boston Globe Library Collection, M214. Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

Miren Uriarte is a sociologist and Professor Emerita of Human Services and Latino Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and her files contain papers documenting the work and research that went into her 1987 doctoral dissertation, “Organizing for Survival: The Emergence of the Puerto Rican Community.” Uriarte gathered internal documents from a variety of Latino community organizations, including La Alianza Hispana, Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA), and the Hispanic Office of Planning and Evaluation (HOPE). She also collected related reports and publications and conducted oral history interviews with community leaders such as Frieda Garcia, founding director of La Alianza Hispana and later executive director of United South End Settlements; Jovita Fontanez, the first Hispanic woman to head the Boston Election Commission; Hubie Jones, a lifelong advocate for education rights for disabled and non-English-speaking children; Mel King, a community organizer in Boston’s South End; Peter Calcaterra, a project manager for the MBTA who was involved in the Southwest Corridor project and HOPE; and Alex Rodriguez, former executive director of Roxbury’s Cooper Community Center and chairman of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. As a comprehensive whole, these resources address housing, social services, employment, mental health, bilingual education, and the development of the Boston Latino community.

The collection also includes a separate oral history project conducted by Uriarte’s husband, Mauricio Gastón, a professor at UMass Boston’s College of Public and Community Service from 1980 until his death in 1986. His work examined similar issues of civil rights, economic and social justice, and housing justice. Uriarte kept the transcripts, audiocassettes, and supplemental material from Gastón’s project, and it is now preserved alongside her analogous work in this collection.

The finding aid provides more contextual information on Uriarte and the collection, including full series arrangement and container inventories. Please email archives@northeastern.edu with any questions, reference requests, or to schedule a visit.

Aleks Renerts (he/him) has a dual MA degree in history and library and information science, with a concentration in archives management, from Simmons University. He received his BA in history from McGill University.

Ready to Research: Charles L. Glenn Papers

The Dr. Charles L. Glenn papers are now fully processed and ready for research at the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

These papers are from Glenn’s career as Director of Urban Education and Equity under the Massachusetts Department of Education, spanning from 1963 to 2000 and centering on the desegregation process of Massachusetts public schools. As director, Glenn (who served as a minister in Roxbury during the 1960s) was charged with developing the procedures for racial integration and administering these and other equal opportunity plans in the state.

Black and white image of a white man wearing traditional clergy clothes (black clothes and a white collar). His hands are clasped together. Behind him are several people of various raches
Rev. Charles Glenn singing at St. John’s, Roxbury, ca. 1964. Photograph by Edward Jenner, courtesy of the Boston Globe Library collection, M214. Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

The collection provides a fascinating look into the administrative side of school desegregation. Reports, newsletters, periodicals, correspondence, notes, and memoranda document the long and sometimes difficult process of achieving equitable access to education.

These papers also show a broad history of desegregation, with some of the earliest documents including materials from the “Freedom Stayout Day” boycott. In June 1964, Glenn and other community leaders hosted public school students at alternate locations dubbed “Freedom Schools,” that were held in churches, community centers, and other locations across the city during the Freedom School Stayouts. They reflect on the meanings of equality, racial injustice, and the goal of desegregation with their peers, exercising their civil right to protest.

Later collection materials highlight the legal and administrative work undertaken to achieve educational equity. A bird’s-eye view of the decades-long integration process can be discovered in files on individual school districts, correspondence between departments, notes and statistical data, and reports generated by various offices and involved parties.

This collection is of great use to those researching school desegregation history, the administrative background of school integration, bilingual education programs, magnet school programs, and the application of these processes in Boston and Massachusetts specifically.

The finding aid provides more contextual information on Glenn and the collection, including series arrangement and container inventories. Email archives@northeastern.edu with any questions or to schedule a visit.

Aleks Renerts (he/him) has dual master’s degrees in history and library and information science, with a concentration in archives management, from Simmons University. He received his BA in history from McGill University.

 

A group of protestors stand on a sidewalk, one holding a sign that reads "CANCER = ASTHMA DEATH"

Ready to Research: Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) Records

Records for Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE), a non-profit environmental justice organization, have been processed and are ready for research in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections (NUASC).

ACE was founded in 1993 and is still active today. Based in Roxbury, the group seeks to eradicate environmental racism and classism through legal strategy, community organizing, and outreach. Examples of urban pollutants that disproportionately impact low-income communities and communities of color, and that are the focus of ACE’s attention, include vehicle transmissions, waste management, and industrial facilities such as asphalt plants.

A group of protestors stand on a sidewalk, one holding a sign that reads "CANCER = ASTHMA DEATH"
Breathe Out Challenge targeting bus emissions, 1998. ACE records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections

The collection guide provides contextual information and folder-level container lists for 130 boxes of records containing administrative, staff, program, and communications files; audiovisual recordings and photographs; born-digital media formats such as floppy disks and compact discs; and published and unpublished literature. Overall, these records document regional and occasionally national environmental justice activism, community organizing, and the workings of a small non-profit organization.

Side-by-side images. Left shows a person sitting in front of a desk, looking down at a lightbox with an archival box of folders next to them. Right shows a person standing on a stool in front of a large shelf of archival boxes
Processing assistants Julia Lee and Aleks Renerts working on the ACE records.

Processing assistants Julia Lee and Aleks Renerts, who have both been with NUASC for over two years, contributed significantly to the processing of this collection. They conducted preservation and arranged material in over 100 boxes, maintained spreadsheets, consolidated and labeled boxes, numbered folders, sleeved and organized thousands of photographs, interfiled newspaper clippings into one chronological sequence, and more.

To access the Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) records, email NUASC at archives@northeastern.edu.

 

Special Collections Featured in ICA Boston Watershed Art Installation

A series of red and black threads hanging from the ceiling with folded papers suspended within. Two chairs also sit within the threads
Chiharu Shiota’s “Home Less Home” exhibit featuring reproductions of materials from the Archives & Special Collections. Photo courtesy of Molly Brown.

Reproductions from the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections are featured as a part of artist Chiharu Shiota’s “Home Less Home” exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston’s Watershed.

The installations will be on display until September 1.

“Home Less Home” creates the shape of a house with many red and black ropes hung from the ceiling. Suspended within the ropes are records of immigration, such as passports and immigration papers. ICA Boston’s iteration of the installation also draws specifically on Boston history, featuring archival records from institutions across the city that speak to the theme of home and the actions around home: finding a home, leaving home, protecting home, and creating a new home.

Northeastern’s archives brought a unique organizational activism component to the exhibit through our Special Collections’ focus on neighborhood social justice movements. Reference staff worked with ICA Boston curators to find records addressing housing activism and advocacy in Boston’s neighborhoods. The exhibit features records from the following collections:

Paper suspended amid red threads reading "Servicios Humanos"
Records from the Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción. Photo courtesy of Molly Brown.
Papers suspended within hanging red threads
Records from the Phyllis Ryan papers. Photo courtesy of Molly Brown.

















This installation is Shiota’s first in New England and is featured as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial 2025. Check it out before September 1!

Library Receives CPA Grant to Digitize “Black Art and Joy in Boston (and Beyond)”

Black and white image of Elma Lewis writing at a desk while wearing a cap and gown
Elma Lewis at the New England Conservatory of Music where she was conferred an honorary degree in 1977

The Northeastern University Library is proud to announce that the Archives and Special Collections has been awarded a City of Boston Community Preservation Act (CPA) grant to fund the project Black Art and Joy in Boston (and Beyond): Elma Lewis and the National Center of Afro-American Artists. This grant of almost $460,000 will support the digitization, cataloging, and publication of primary source materials from four archival collections that document the extraordinary work of Elma Lewis (1921-2004) and the cultural institutions she founded.

Dan Cohen, Vice President for Information Collaboration and Dean of the Northeastern University Library, said, “The University Archives and Special Collections department carefully preserves and protects access to some of the deep history and stories of Boston’s Black community. This project will augment and complement their and the Library’s Digital Production team’s effort to digitize significant portions of the Freedom House’s historical collection. We are thrilled to partner with the City of Boston and the Community Preservation team on this project.”

Lewis was a transformative force who trained a full generation of African American dancers, singers, musicians, actors, and visual artists in Boston. She formed the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in 1950 and established the National Center of Afro-American Artists in 1968, along with its museum in 1969. Her outsized influence on the Black arts movement in Boston, and how her ideas and techniques spread nationally and internationally, represents a crucial chapter in the city’s cultural history.

Black and white image of ballet dance class
A ballet class at the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, 1975
A green program for the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts Children's Theatre presentation of FACES (A Play with Music)
A program for a children’s play at the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in 1981

This project amplifies the voices of those who were in Lewis’s orbit as teachers, collaborators, or students. It also highlights the influence of Afrocentric organizations on Boston, a necessary element to understanding Black civil rights work in the city and the rich network of organizations and individuals focused on community-building and empowerment.

The digitized collections will shed light on the decades of labor and coalition-building that are foundational to Boston’s existing Black arts infrastructure. By publishing them online, we make this history accessible to Bostonians at any time and for any purpose, while also reaching larger local and national audiences through participation in Digital Commonwealth and the Digital Public Library of America.

The curricular potential of this collection represents one of its most valuable forms of impact. The project will build on the successful Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection, a collaboratively built collection of scanned archival materials documenting the desegregation of Boston’s public schools, in collaboration with the district itself. That project demonstrated how archival materials can be integrated into K-12 curriculum design, bringing primary source materials directly into classrooms across the city.

An archival box from the Elma Lewis collection, with a selection of photos and papers
A box of archival materials from National Center of Afro-American Artists records and some of its contents

These digital collections will enable Bostonians, including relatives and friends of those who appear in the collections, to access this evidence of their community’s rich cultural history. The materials will be freely available online, searchable, and integrated with our existing digital collections to provide a deeper and richer pool of resources illustrating the activities and accomplishments of Boston’s Black residents and leaders.

As we embark on this preservation effort, we honor not only Elma Lewis’s remarkable legacy but also the ongoing vitality of the Black arts movement in Boston that she helped establish. Through the CPA’s support, we ensure that future generations will have access to these invaluable records of creativity, resilience, and community building.

For more information about the project, please contact Giordana Mecagni at g.mecagni@northeastern.edu or 617-373-8318.

To learn more about what collections from Elma Lewis we hold, visit our research guide Finding Elma Lewis in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

This blog post was co-written by Giordana Mecagni, Head of Archives and Special Collections, and Molly Brown, Reference and Outreach Archivist.