Boston Public Schools

Supporting Community Commemoration: 50 Years of the Garrity Decision

Outreach work in archives often intersects with observing anniversaries. This is especially true at Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections, which houses records of community-based organizations that are still around today. This year, in 2024, community members across the Greater Boston area have been observing the anniversary of the court decision by Judge Arthur Garrity to desegregate Boston’s public schools.

My role as Reference and Outreach Archivist is to connect the community members and organizations with records relevant to their needs in the most meaningful way possible. I do this type of work regularly by providing classes, workshops, and reference and research services. But for occasions such as a 50-year anniversary, reference and outreach work requires customized approaches.

This summer, I managed a very customized approach to archival outreach: coordinating and designing a multi-archive and guest-curated exhibit on school desegregation for installation in the Boston Public Library’s (BPL) Gallery J. While discussion of creating the exhibit began a year ago, when leaders in the Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative (BDBI helped submit a proposal to the BPL, the curation, exhibition selection, design, and installation happened quickly over the last couple of months. What resulted is a 20-case exhibition in the central branch of Boston’s public library entitled, “A History of Public Education Reform and Desegregation in Boston.”

A glass case containing archival documents and photos
One chapter of the “A History of Public Education Reform and Desegregation in Boston” exhibit in Gallery J of Boston Public Library
Archivist Molly Brown stands on a stool and hangs archival materials in a glass display case
Molly Brown installing exhibit pieces

Community historian Jim Vrabel lent his deep knowledge to propose an exhibit observing 10 chapters of Boston’s desegregation history, beginning in 1635 and ending today in 2024. Paired with each chapter was a timeline of events in the long history of education activism and desegregation in the city. Area archives, including the City of Boston Archives, the John Joseph Moakley Archive and Institute at Suffolk University, and the University of Massachusetts Boston Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library, contributed records that were selected by Vrabel to illustrate the narratives in each chapter. This collaboration resulted more than 90 archival records and excerpts included in the 10 timelines.

After the exhibit narrative had been written and the archival materials selected, it was up to me to design, format, and caption the exhibit, as well as make reproductions to display in the exhibit cases. Northeastern University Library sponsored the printing of the reproductions. All of the exhibit elements were installed for viewing on Sept. 18, in time to serve as a part of BPL’s citywide forums on Sept. 28, offering visual and tangible evidence to the emotional personal stories and responses to the events of school desegregation that still reverberate today.

A glass case containing archival documents and photos

But not all outreach takes place in an exhibit. Sometimes, a custom outreach project looks like making large-scale reproductions of documents and photographs to spark conversation, kept and stewarded by a partner organization, as I did last September for the BDBI. Other times, it can be providing in-depth rights and permissions labor, approving use of images in projects and suggesting other images to include, as I did for the BDBI and WGBH for their digital walking tour of school desegregation history.

Beyond the digital resources, you can also view the exhibit for yourself by visiting the Boston Public Library’s Central Branch (700 Boylston Street). It will be on display in Gallery J until Jan. 7.

Follow the BDBI for more events and updates, and consider attending their forums at the BPL this Saturday, Sept. 28.

Honoring the 50th Anniversary of the Boston Public Schools’ Desegregation

Black and white image of children and adults walking on a sidewalk holding protest signs
1963 Picket line at the Boston School Committee offices

The year 2024 will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1974 decision by Judge Garrity that found the Boston Public Schools unconstitutionally segregated. A cohort of historians, activists, teachers, former students, civic leaders, and community members have gathered together to build events and outreach to observe this significant anniversary. On Thursday, September 7, at the Massachusetts State House, the Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative announced their efforts toward increasing conversation, commemoration, and coalition-building around the history of school desegregation in Boston’s public schools.

Surrounding the press and attendees gathered at the State House were reproductions of records from the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections’ many collections documenting the long history of school desegregation and the fight against racial imbalance in the Boston Public Schools. I worked with members of the initiative to select photographs and records that were emblematic of the key events and stories of school desegregation, busing, and early education activism. Records selected included flyers advertising Freedom Schools as an opportunity for civil protest; Ruth Batson‘s demands issued on behalf of the NAACP to the Boston School Committee; and records of the pre-1974 busing organization Operation Exodus, run by Ellen Jackson, as well as photos of the many pro-busing and anti-busing protests that took place across the city of Boston and photos of the first days and weeks of busing in 1974 and 1975.

Green flyer titled "Stay Out for Freedom" and a typed list of 14 proposals for the Boston School Committee
Left: 1963 flyer about the “Stay Out for Freedom Day.” Right: 1965 Proposal to the School Committee.
Black and white image of a Black student standing in front of a school bus surrounded by police officers, with a crowd of adults looking on
First day of busing at South Boston High, September 12, 1974, photo by Dan Sheehan courtesy of the Boston Globe Library collection

Once the records were selected, reproductions were made to be featured at the many events of the Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative, alongside other archives’ historical desegregation records. We are grateful to their work of activating our archival collections and inviting the Greater Boston community to put these records into conversation with the present and their own memories of the past.

To follow the Boston Desegregation and Busing Initiative and their upcoming events, you can visit their Facebook page. Their first forum, “On the Organizing for Better Schools and Desegregation, 1960-1973,” will be held September 26 at 6 p.m. at Roxbury Community College.

To browse the historic Boston school desegregation records from the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections, as well as other Boston archives, visit https://bpsdesegregation.library.northeastern.edu/.

Archives Research Project Included in “The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook”

Take 2 library professionals.
Add 25 high school students.
Mix in a specially curated collection of archival materials.
And let simmer over a 90-minute class period.

Cover image of The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook, edited by Julie M. Porterfield

This is the recipe Reference and Outreach Librarian Molly Brown and Arts, Humanities, and Experiential Learning Library Regina Pagani have perfected while working with students and teachers from the Boston Public Schools over the past few years and it is now included in The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook, a collection of first-hand accounts from librarians, archivists, and other educators who use primary sources to teach information literacy skills to various audiences.


Brown and Pagani’s project is detailed in chapter 28 and titled “A Potluck of Expertise: Inviting Boston Public Schools’ Juniors to Use Northeastern’s Archives and Special Collections’ Pantry to Build Their Recipes.” They detail an ongoing project they have developed with BPS educators Chris Madsen and Katherine Petta where students work in groups to write a biography of an activist who advocated for racial equality in Boston’s public schools, using primary sources from the Archives’ vast social justice collections.

Regina Pagani and Molly Brown teach a class of students in the Archives Reading Room
Regina Pagani and Molly Brown (standing) lead Lucy Maulsby’s architecture class on a lesson in archival research, similar to the types of classes they teach to BPS juniors. Photo courtesy of Mary Hughes.

The chapter provides a detailed account of the project, with suggestions for ways to alter it based on different archives’ collections. The 2021 edition of The Teaching with Primary Sources Cookbook, edited by Julie M. Porterfield, is available through the American Library Association.

To learn more about the different ways Brown, Pagani and other Northeastern University Library staff members have utilized the Archives’ unique collections to teach primary source research to students at Northeastern and at the Boston Public Schools, visit the Teaching with Archives page.

Boston Public Schools collection project complete

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. The beginning of a multi-archival scanning project that would result in the Boston Public Schools Desegregation Collection occurred in 2014 after a collaboration with the Boston Public Schools on school desegregation curricula. Now, in 2018, six archives’ materials totaling in over 4,500 items have been unified through an effort of selection, scanning, and cataloging. As of February 1, the collection is now available for public research through a portal created by the Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections: https://bpsdesegregation.library.northeastern.edu. The portal includes guides on how to use the collection, materials for educators, and other resources including timelines, exhibits, and links to other school desegregation collections. You are invited you to explore the collection as you see fit, by browsing materials contextualized through the portal or by searching using the Digital Public Library of America widget on the home page. Materials narrating the experiences of students, teachers, parents, and other community members in the midst of school desegregation in Boston await you. This project was made possible by the collaborative efforts of the Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections, University Archives and Special Collections at UMass Boston, Boston College Libraries, the Moakley Archive and Institute at Suffolk University, the Boston City Archives, and the National Archives and Records Administration in Boston and the support of Digital Commonwealth and the Digital Public Library of America. Along with collaborative partnerships, this project received financial and administrative support from the Boston Library Consortium.

Select Archives and Special Collections materials are now available in the Digital Public Library of America

NAACP pickets School CommitteeNearly 9,000 primary source documents and images curated and digitized by Northeastern University Libraries’ Archives and Special Collections are now available in the Digital Public Library of America. The DPLA is a national resource that brings together digital materials held by American libraries, archives, and museums. Northeastern University Libraries’ contribution to DPLA was made possible through our membership in Digital Commonwealth (our local DPLA Hub), who harvest the metadata and thumbnails from the DRS and make them available in the DPLA. The full set of contributed materials include videos from Northeastern’s Holocaust Awareness Week programming, records from the Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción community development program, and many more. More than a third of the contributed materials document the desegregation of Boston Public Schools and busing of students in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With assistance from the library’s Digital Metadata & Ingest group, Archives staff organized, selected, and digitized approximately 3,300 photographs, documents, and other printed ephemera created in the years before and after the busing proclamation was issued by Judge Garrity in 1974. The Archives chose to focus on Boston’s history of desegregation as part of a coordinated effort with other institutions in the Boston Library Consortium to collect and digitize materials that “illuminate the complexity of state- and city-wide politics, community activism, and advocacy.” As Northeastern, UMass Boston, Suffolk University, and other Boston-area institutions make their primary source materials available to the public, the DPLA’s collection of artifacts documenting the desegregation of Boston Public Schools will grow. The end result will be a robust shared archive that will aid in national teaching and learning activities focused on the history and legacy of segregation and racism in the Unites States. The Boston Public Schools, for example, are already integrating these primary sources into the curriculum in an effort to “ensure that every Boston Public Schools student learns about this important and troubling chapter in our city’s history.” These 9,000 files are just the beginning of Northeastern University Libraries’ contribution to the DPLA; we will continue to contribute to Digital Commonwealth and DPLA as more materials become available in our local repository.