The lower level of Snell Library now hosts a semi-permanent exhibit orienting visitors to the stories of Boston’s neighborhoods, activist organizations, and organizers available to them in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.
Molly Brown/Northeastern University Library
Installed in March, the exhibit features highlights of historic events, notable leaders, and impactful organizations from the Mission Hill, Roxbury, South End, Chinatown, and East Boston neighborhoods who are represented in the special collections.
Visitors to the lower level are greeted with images of Boston leaders and luminaries such as Elma Lewis, Melnea Cass, Mel King, Mary Ellen Welch, and Carmen Pola, as well as organizations who are still working in Boston today, like Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, the Boston Living Center, Freedom House, and La Alianza Hispana.
Molly Brown/Northeastern University Library
Molly Brown/Northeastern University Library
The first iteration of the exhibit was selected and written by Reference and Outreach Archivist Molly Brown and has room to highlight future new organizations and individuals who donate records to NUASC or are celebrating significant milestones. It was designed in collaboration with Christopher Raia from MGA Partners.
Bob Terrell at the MBTA Silver Line opening protest, July 2002. Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) records.
Throughout his life, Bob Terrell played an active role in advancing environmental, housing, and transportation justice in the City of Boston, and advocated for his neighborhood of Roxbury. He was involved in multiple organizations and held several municipal government positions, as well. So when his papers were donated to the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections upon his passing in 2025, they provided a unique look into the city’s history.
The most prevalent organizations represented in Terrell’s papers are the Roxbury Neighborhood Council (RNC), Greater Roxbury Neighborhood Authority (GRNA), and Washington Street Corridor Coalition (WSCC). The RNC and GRNA sought to increase community control of their neighborhoods through the development of housing, education, and economic opportunities. Meanwhile, the WSCC focused on advocating for adequate public transportation, needed after the loss of the El (the Boston Elevated Railway), which had traveled down Washington Street.
Other records in the collection document the MBTA Rider Oversight Committee, Black Political Task Force, On the Move, and the Massachusetts Community and Banking Council, among other organizations. Terrell often held leadership positions within these organizations such as board member, committee member, director, and executive director.
Records documenting community concerns about Washington Street and adequate transportation, 1990s. Bob Terrell papers.
The attention Terrell paid to local and world news related to environmental, housing, and transportation issues is evident in the number of reports, studies, newsletters, and other records that he accumulated over time. As I went through these items, I wondered to what extent global developments and initiatives informed the work he was doing in Boston. I often became engrossed with the interconnectedness of local and larger world matters, especially when news from Boston grew to become world news.
Additional materials in the collection helped me appreciate even more how committee and active Terrell was in his advocacy. Initially, this realization occurred as I went through his educational materials. Terrell received his BA in Government and Sociology from Bowdoin College in 1974. Later in life, he returned to school and received his Master’s in Public Policy from Tufts University in 2012. Terrell kept his notebooks, readings, and other resources from both undergraduate and graduate school. To me, this conveys that Terrell valued the information he learned from his professors and carried it throughout his life, which then impacted the advocacy work he did in his community.
One of the calendars used throughout Bob Terrell’s life. Bob Terrell papers.
Occasionally, I would also stumble upon his personal calendars. These, too, helped me understand how busy and active he was. In addition to attending conferences relevant to his work, there were organizational meetings to attend. Sometimes the entry in his calendar would even have a location for the event or meeting, which shows how much effort it takes to be so involved, but this was his life’s work and he was committed. It was more surprising to see a free day in his calendar than not. I found the calendars quite inspiring, in seeing how much one person can do. If a person were to only commit to one cause or organization they could still create an impact. This makes me feel a little less intimidated to get involved myself.
If you are interested in local Boston advocacy work, especially in relation to transportation, environmental, and housing justice, Bob Terrell’s papers are a must-see.
Contact the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections by emailing us at archives@northeastern.edu to find out more about Bob Terrell’s papers.
Former Processing Assistant Aries Peralta (he/him) graduated from Simmons University with an MS in Library and Information Science with a concentration in archives management. He received his BA in art history from the University of Connecticut.
Since 1977, Northeastern University has hosted events dedicated to remembering and learning the lessons of the Holocaust. Since 1991, the Holocaust and Genocide Awareness Committee (HGAC) has organized these programs, with this year’s events running the week of March 16.
The records of the HGAC live in the Archives and Special Collections, and the Digital Production Services staff have been creating captions for videos available in the Digital Repository Service. We’re currently focusing on videos of Holocaust lectures and survivors.
Captioning survivor testimonies has been an emotional experience as I’ve heard people’s stories of trauma, often repeatedly as the same survivors have spoken at Northeastern multiple times. However, their stories also offer hope and advice for how to make a difference, no matter the circumstances.
“Because of Oskar and Emilie Schindler, I was given a chance to grow up, to get married, to have children and to have grandchildren. And because I am an eyewitness to some of the most horrific crimes committee against innocent people, I’m also an eyewitness to what morality and humanity and goodness can do, because Oskar Schindler had proven to the world that they did not have to stand by and do nothing, that there is always something that could have been done. Oskar Schindler and Emilie Schindler could not stand by, avert their eyes to the slaughter of innocent people. They acted on their faith, on their beliefs, [regarding] their safety, because they felt that was the only thing they could do, because to be a bystander is a bigger sin than to be a perpetrator.” (2002)
Rena Finder speaking in 2010.
She discusses the moral impact of small acts from ordinary people:
“And this is a moral for everyone, that each and every one of you has the power to make a difference, because each and every one of you can make a decision. Not to stand by when you see injustice done, but to make changes. You have to participate…There is always something you can do. You don’t have to stand by when you see someone beating up on somebody else. You don’t have to listen when somebody makes an ethnic joke. You have the power to walk away. You have the power to say, ‘I don’t want to hear it. You can’t say that in front of me.’ You have the power to extend a hand to your friend, to your neighbor, regardless of their race or religion.” (2002)
Raymond Fridmann speaking in 1994.
Survivor Raymond Fridmann focuses on how to have a larger influence on the world:
“If there’s one thing you should do and I say that every year here, register to vote because this is the only expression you have to make sure that you got the government of the people you choose. Do not take it for granted that your vote does not count. Your vote counts. Get educated. Get educated, for you to have jobs. Get educated and read history because if we don’t read history, we will go back into the same holes.” (2002)
Finder ends with a call to action:
“It’s really up to you. You have the power to write to the president, to the congress, to the senator. Don’t ever believe that a small group of committed citizens can’t change things, because those are the only ones that can. And you are going to become just that group that will change.” (2002)
I’m excited to make these materials more accessible, and hope these moving testimonies continue to inspire their listeners to take action.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
