Archives and Special Collections

Archives, Historical Records, Special Collections

“Neighborhood Matters” Fall 2015 lunchtime movies announced

Neighborhood Matters is a lunchtime series that celebrates the ways in which community groups have shaped the neighborhoods surrounding the Northeastern campus. This series is co-curated by the Northeastern Center for the Arts and the Archives and Special Collections at the Northeastern University Library.
 The Series’ fall series includes three films about the North End, Chinatown, and the impacts of the City’s 1974 school desegregation efforts.
Boston’s North End: America’s Italian Neighborhood
Tue, Oct 13, 2015
12:00 pm, Snell Library 90, Free Lunch
Special Guest: Maureen McNamara; Filmmaker Nancy Caruso, Co-founder, North End Waterfront Central Artery Committee From 1870-1900, more than 4 million southern Italians left their home country, fleeing violence, social chaos, and widespread poverty. Boston’s North End tells the story of the individuals and families who found their way their way to Boston and settled in what became one of America’s oldest “Little Italy” communities.
The Struggle Over Parcel C: How Boston’s Chinatown Won a Victory in the Fight Against Institutional Expansionism and Environmental Racism
Tue, Oct 27, 2015
12:00 pm, Snell Library 90, Free Lunch
Special Guests: Giles Li, Executive Director of Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center (BCMC) Tunney Lee, Chief Architect in Chinatown’s development and professor emeritus at MIT The Struggle Over Parcel C was created by Mike Blockenstein with the Asian Community Development Corporation and Boston-area high school students and is part of A Chinatown Banquet. This series of short documentaries explores the history, culture, and politics that shaped Boston’s most densely populated residential neighborhood, Chinatown.
Can We Talk? Learning from Boston’s Busing/ Desegregation Project
Tue, Nov 10, 2015
12:00 pm, Snell Library 90, Free Lunch
Special Guests Donna Bivens, Director Boston Busing/Desegregation Project at the Union of Minority Neighborhoods (UMN) Dr. Polly F. Attwood, Northeastern University’s Department of Education Can We Talk? Learning from Boston’s Busing/Desegregation is a film that provides an intimate look at how people’s lives and the Boston community were changed by the 1970’s educational and racial crisis that garnered national attention.

BPS Desegregation Project: Commencement

Freedom School The following is a series written by archivists, academics, activists, and educators making available primary source material, providing pedagogical support, and furthering the understanding of Boston Public School’s Desegregation history. View all posts The 2014-2015 school year marked the 40th anniversary of Boston Public School (BPS)’s court-ordered school desegregation.  To commemorate this event, BPS is building a multi-grade curricular unit for students to study the city’s school desegregation and “busing” crisis.  Before this unit was created, students learned about integration efforts only through the case study of Little Rock, AK.  Neglecting to address, understand, and own Boston’s own civil rights struggles perpetuates the notion that the Civil Rights Movement targeted injustice and segregation only in the South, when in truth, Boston’s struggles were equally important and difficult. To assist this effort, Northeastern’s University Archives and Special Collections is coordinating a multi-archive scanning project whose goal is to make available archival material that relates to what how and why busing happened in Boston, as well as the after effects it had on the community.  The goal is to create a digital library of material that can be widely disseminated for both curricular and scholarly use. This effort has been made possible by a gift from the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), whose leadership has been essential to this project. This School Desegregation and ”Busing”  Digital Library is a lightweight, nimble project that attempts to lay the technical and descriptive groundwork for cross-institutional collaboration through the technical infrastructure of the DPLA and Digital Commonwealth.  It also serves as the kernel of what all hope becomes a long-standing collaboration between BPS and local archives.   In an ideal world, all 57,000 BPS students visit an archive during their K-12 years.  Realistically, digitizing this material allows teachers unfettered access to a deep pool of primary source material which can inspire students to learn more about the history of their own city and become emerging leaders. The BLC members initiating this effort are University Archives and Special Collections at UMass Boston, the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections, The State Library of Massachusetts’ Special Collections, and Boston College’s John J. Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections.  Additional archival partners include The Moakley Archive and Institute at Suffolk University and the Boston City Archives. Partner institutions are scanning material that illuminate the complexity of state- and city-wide politics, community activism and advocacy, and all parties’ reactions to national and local legislation.  The time frame covered originates with the Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954), works through the Civil Rights Act (1964), into and past the Morgan v. Hennigan case (1974), and the resulting citywide unrest.  The collection aims to illustrate the reaction of politicians, school staff and administrators, parents and community members to desegregation by busing. To watch the growing collection of items that is Northeastern’s contribution to this effort, please visit the University’s Digital Repository. — Giordana Mecagni is Head of Special Collections and University Archivist at Northeastern University

Professor of History Gerry Herman Retires After 50 Years at Northeastern

Just try to name a University committee that Gerry Herman hasn’t been involved with over the past half-century. Handbooks and contracts? He reviewed them. Strategic Plans? He helped plan them. Technology and distance learning initiatives? He championed them. Herman first called Northeastern home as a graduate student in 1965. Since then, he has been on the cutting edge of  incorporating media into the  study and teaching of history. He taught courses on topics ranging from Western and World History to the History of Flight and Space Travel. Herman has given new meaning to the term “University Service,” serving as University Copyright Officer (1988-2012), Special Assistant to the Provost (1979-1987), and Special Assistant to University Counsel (1987-2012) in addition to chairing a host of committees and task forces. Herman has also been integral to the success of Holocaust Remembrance Week, serving on the Holocaust Awareness Committee from 1983-2013. Professor Herman retired from the University on July 1, 2015, but his impact will surely be felt for many years to come. Herman’s professional papers and records (the Gerald H. Herman Papers) are preserved in the Archives and Special Collections Department in Snell Library.  

Herman teaching an honors seminar in 1984.

Professor Herman in 1975.

Herman and President Richard Freeland at the inaugural NUTV broadcast, April 1997.

The Theater Offensive: 25 Years of Gay Theater, Bold Pride, Conscious Intersectionality, and #BlackLivesMatter

Northeastern’s Special Collections and Archives preserves The Theater Offensive Records, a prominent gay theater troupe that has long been a defining presence with the Boston gay community. Founded by Abe Rybeck in 1989, the Theater Offensive boasts that they are “Twenty-Five Years BOLD” this year. From  the OUT on the Edge festival, to championing AIDS Awareness in the Fenway in the early 1990’s, to the queer cabaret band, Adult Children of Heterosexuals, the Theater Offensive celebrates their fearlessness and has never shied from political activism and social justice, making this collection wholly unique and incredibly modern – even with its quarter century time stamp.

                   Political stickers from the late 1980’s, from the United Fruit Company Series.

This collection offers a backstage look at what it takes to run a gay theater troupe in Boston. This includes not only the fights for funding, but the overwhelming social justice obligation of being a member of such a massive and vocal community. For over twenty years, the Theater Offensive has taken that responsibility in stride, which is showcased in this collection’s festival posters, photographs, strategic planning for outreach, and demand for community presence.

           Posters for plays depicting black gay life, from the Other Festivals and Production Series

People of color, especially people of color within the LGBTQA community, deserve and need to have their stories told. The Theater Offensive collection showcases how they have been boldly telling these stories for years and makes one realize how we are only just now starting to listen. As this collection reflects, the Theater Offensive will continue with the message they have chanted, sung, and marched for since 1989: #BlackLivesMatter, #BlackGayLivesMatter, #BlackTransLivesMatter as they did proudly at Boston’s Annual Gay Pride Parade in June, 2015.

Lawsuit Against the MBTA for Unlawful Censorship of Condom Campaign Ads

Did you know that in 1994, the AIDS Action Committee sued the MBTA for unlawful censorship of a subway campaign featuring the use of condoms?  Seems hard to believe, but you can read all about it in our Archives and Special Collections, which has received a donation of new material from former AIDS Action Committee Director Thomas McNaught (1991-1996).

This donation adds to the existing AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts Records in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

While processing the new materials I noticed the photo of Captain B. Careful on the Boston Common. It stood out  for a few reasons. His sheer ingenuity for costume design. The huge smile on his face even though it was noticeably cold outside.

Captain B. Careful, Condom Campaign. AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Inc. (M61, Box 42, Folder 14.)

Less tangibly his image stood out to me because he symbolizes a continuity in Boston’s legacy of advocating for the power of knowledge and striving toward equal rights and opportunity for all. 

In 1992,  AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts (AAC)  introduced New England’s first public service television AIDS prevention campaign directed at gay men.

They also launched the United States’ first statewide transit campaign for AIDS awareness by placing condom posters on 437 buses throughout Massachusetts ultimately leading to a legal battle with the MBTA.

Highlights of the collection include:

  • photographs and press
  • outreach material regarding the condom campaign
  • materials on the AAC’s education and prevention campaigns
  • documentation regarding the AAC’s lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) for unlawful censorship of a subway campaign featuring the use of condoms in 1994