Archives and Special Collections

NU Archives and Special Collections featured in Bill Russell: Legend

Black and white image of Bill Russell wearing a white Celtics uniform holds the ball while leaping with spread legs.
Action shot of Bill Russell playing for the Boston Celtics June 23, 1966 courtesy of the Boston Globe Library Collection.

For anyone who has browsed the Boston Globe Library Collection’s sports photographs in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections, some photos in the Netflix docuseries Bill Russell: Legend might look familiar. The docuseries was released on Netflix February 8 and features many photographs from our Boston Globe Library Collection and also draws upon the Archives’ records of Bill Russell’s social justice history.

Black and white image of Bill Russell wearing a dark jacket and tie and sitting in front of a machine.
Portrait of Bill Russell seated on April 17, 1966 taken by Gilbert E. Friedberg, Boston Globe.

The Netflix docuseries explored many facets of Russell’s life beyond his sports career, which mirrors the records of Bill Russell held in our collection. Along with photographs of Russell coaching and playing basketball, the Boston Globe Library Collection has photos of Russell speaking at school graduations, at press conferences at the Boston NAACP headquarters, at Roxbury neighborhood meetings, and at his restaurant Slade’s Bar and Grill. 

Russell is represented in our Special Collections as a frequent presence at Civil Rights demonstrations and Freedom Stay-Outs protesting the racial imbalance in the Boston Public Schools. In an interview, former president of the Boston NAACP branch Kenneth Guscott recalled seeing Russell: 

“I remember when we were marching down on one of the marches, there was more than one march, that the star from the Celtics, Bill Russell, he was very active in the civil right movement. When we were marching, Bill was there and he was right in the front line with us, right across. As they marched down Columbus Avenue, this lady came rushing up and said, wait for me, wait for me and she jumped in the line beside Bill Russell. It was his wife. She jumped in that line and started marching with us.”

Black and white image of Bill Russell sitting at a table and speaking into several microphones. There are two other men sitting on either side of him. On a window behind him are the letters NAACP. The photo is resting on top of a folder with a label "Russell, Bill (Basketball) Groups"
Photo of Bill Russell speaking at NAACP Headquarters July 8, 1964 seated next to Kenneth Guscott (left) and Marvin Gilmore (right), taken by Hal Sweeney, Boston Globe.

In a speech by Russell for the Freedom School graduation ceremonies in 1966, he closed by saying asking Roxbury students: 

“Is there anyone of you young people here tonight who wants to be President of the United States? Is there anyone who wants to be Secretary of the United States? Would you like to be Ambassador to the United Nations? Why not? 

Remember, you can do anything you want to do. If you want to do it badly enough.” 

Black and white image of Bill Russell, wearing a suite and speaking to a crowd of young Black teenagers. Russell is standing on the left and facing the crowd on the right. He is so tall that he has to stoop a little to reach the microphones.
Photo of Bill Russell speaking at PT Campbell Junior High Freedom Graduation, June 22, 1966, taken by Frank O’Brien, Boston Globe.

Russell’s legacy is preserved  in many archives and special special collections across the country, and many of those archives’ records were gathered to tell the story of Bill Russell’s life in Bill Russell: Legend. Learn more about the Bill Russell: Legend docuseries available through Netflix here.

To learn more about the collection that supplied many images of Bill Russell’s career, visit our Boston Globe Library Collection portal. To learn more about the Freedom Schools demonstrations Russell was a part of visit the Boston School Desegregation Project portal. 

You can listen to the full interview with Kenneth Guscott, taken as a part of the Lower Roxbury Black History Project, here. 

Elma Lewis, Black Art, and Black Joy

A Black woman with a large smile clutches her hands in front of her chest. She is wearing a multicolored top and her hair is in a large bun on the top of her head. Behind her is a bouquet of flowers.
“Elma Ina Lewis candid,” ca. 1981. National Center of Afro-American Artists records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

Northeastern University’s Archives and Special Collections holds many records documenting Boston’s Black history. Several of these that celebrate Black joy and creativity come from Elma Ina Lewis, a leader in Boston’s performing arts scene throughout the mid-20th century. The Elma Ina Lewis papers document her early life and her professional activities, like establishing the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in 1950, the National Center of Afro-American Artists in 1968, and the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in 1969.

Black and white image of a Black man playing a drum with his hands. Children sit before him with their own drums.
“Babatunde Olatunji teaches heritage and drums,” ca. 1961. National Center of Afro-American Artists records, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts records document the history of the school and administrative information regarding its formation as well as productions of Blakrhythms, which uplifted Black voices and cultural concepts. The National Center of Afro-American Artists records also feature performances like those put on by the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, and the Digital Repository Service (DRS) holds a selection of photos from the Center’s performances and rehearsals, as well as scenes from everyday life to form a well-rounded understanding of the Black community and art in Boston between the 1950s and 1990s.

Become familiar with Elma Lewis’ legacy in our Finding Elma Lewis research guide.

To learn more about Elma Lewis and her work, check out the resources available through the DRS and the Archives and Special Collections.

Sources:
“Babatunde Olatunji teaches heritage and drums.” National Center of Afro-American Artists records (M042). Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections Department.
“Elma Ina Lewis candid.” National Center of Afro-American Artists records (M042). Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections Department.

Research in the Archives: NERFC 2023-2024 Grant Applications Open

Archival photos, books, documents, and papers are spread around a round pink table. A hand on the left side of the frame points to one of the documents.
09/24/19 – BOSTON, MA. – A view of articles and photographs from Northeastern’s archive at Snell Library. Photo by Ruby Wallau/Northeastern University

Northeastern University’s Archives and Special Collections is proud to be a member of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC), which is a collaboration of 31 cultural institutions across New England.

The fellowship program’s aim is to promote research across a wide variety of institutions and regions in New England. NERFC grants at least two dozen awards every year. Fellows receive a stipend of $5,000 with the requirement that they conduct their research in at least three of the participating institutions for periods of two weeks each. The diverse group of institutions in NERFC offer research opportunities in collections that span the region’s time period, from pre–European contact to the present day. Past awards have funded research on a wide array of topics conducted by scholars and independent researchers from across the US.

As one of the participating institutions, we encourage you to apply to make use of our records documenting Boston’s history of social justice activism, neighborhoods and public infrastructure, as well as records from individuals and organizations part of the city’s African American, Asian American, LGBTQA, Latinx, and other communities and make connections between our records and other NERFC institutions’. 

Past NERFC fellows’ projects using Northeastern’s archival collections examined feminist health care centers, gay art and photography in 1970s Boston, links between socialist and feminist thought in Boston, and the history of Black intellectuals, to name a few. 

The Archives and Special Collections encourages researchers in the Northeastern community and beyond to apply to NERFC’s fellowship program by the February 1, 2023, deadline.

Have questions about how to get started? Email Reference and Outreach Archivist Molly Brown: mo.brown@northeastern.edu. 

To learn more about the application requirements and other participating institutions, please visit the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium website.

Remembering Christine McVie: An Interview with Larry Katz

Christine McVie standing in front of a microphone holding three maracas. She has long blonde hair and is wearing black.
Christine McVie
(Photo by Raph_PH, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

Christine McVie, long-time keyboardist for the band Fleetwood Mac, died at the age of 79 on November 30, 2022. 

Records of McVie’s life and legacy can be found in the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections’ Larry Katz Tapes, a collection of audio recordings between Boston arts and music writer Larry Katz and numerous musicians from 1980 to 2005. 

This interview with McVie took place shortly after Fleetwood Mac’s fourteenth studio album Tango in the Night was released in 1987, which marked the band’s triumphant return after a five-year hiatus. This hiatus saw the band’s members pursuing solo careers in music, but they ultimately came back together to create more music for, as McVie calls it, “the entity called Fleetwood Mac.” 

Listeners of Katz’s interview can come to understand McVie’s view of the band as something larger than herself or the other members in it. “The end result to me is always magical,” McVie states when asked about the “magic” that Fleetwood Mac imbues on its listeners. Even though she admits that the process can be tedious at times, she also reflects on the “mystical” feeling of listening to a record she could spend an entire year working on. 

In this way, McVie describes the creation of an album “like a painting.” “[We] decide what colors we need, what depth we need, what kind of emotion we need… We sketch it in and fill in the colors as we go along.” 

When asked about her future, McVie states, “I don’t see any reason to stop…I don’t see any reason at all–it’s my life. I don’t know what else I’d do if I didn’t write songs or sing.” 

Source: “Interview with Christine McVie, English singer, songwriter, keyboardist and member of band Fleetwood Mac.” Larry Katz Tapes. University Libraries Archives and Special Collections Department.

Library Staff Work with CRRJ to Investigate and Make Accessible 1,000 Records of Racial Homicides in Jim Crow South in New Burnham-Nobles Archive

Last week’s release of the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive by the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) was a culmination of years of work by both the Northeastern University School of Law and by the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections.

Black and white image of a Black man wearing a hat and sitting on an old car. Text on the photo reads "Caleb "Picky Pie" Hill 28 Son, Brother, Father, Husband, Irvington Georgia"
Library staff have worked to digitize photos and records of racially motivated homicides in the Jim Crow South, like that of Caleb Hill, Jr., who was murdered by two white men in Georgia in 1949, with the help of local police. The killers were not indicted.

The archive, a comprehensive collection of 1,000 racial homicides that took place in the Jim Crow South between 1930 and 1954, will serve as a tool to shed light on the scope of racial murders during this time frame, their mishandling by local police and authorities, and their effect on the law and politics. It can be found at crrjarchive.org.

The project is the result of 15 years of work, with hundreds of students gathering 20,000 pieces of evidence — items like death certificates, press clippings, law enforcement files, reports from civil rights groups, photographs, and personal stories.

Led by Project Archivist Gina Nortonsmith, staff from the Library’s Archives and Special Collections, Digital Production Services, and Digital Scholarship Group then worked tirelessly to take that raw data and make it searchable, digitizing and cataloging it so that researchers can quickly gather information as they study specific cases or the general trend of anti-Black violence in the Jim Crow south.

“This is one of the most important projects that the Northeastern University Library has been involved with, and I’m proud of the many staff members who have helped to build this essential archive that documents a tragic, unsettling period in America’s history,” said Dan Cohen, Dean of the Library.

The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive is part of the larger Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, whose aim is to educate the public about historical anti-Black racial violence and failures of the criminal justice system, as well as to investigate those cases in which proper justice has not been served. It was founded by Northeastern University Law Professor Margaret Burnham, who serves as its director and recently published the book By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners.