Boston 
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/10/2021
A Forgotten Black Founding Father
by Danielle Allen
The figure of Black abolitionist Prince Hall has been discussed for his advocacy for abolition in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, but there remains a deeper work of historical reconstruction to understand his connections to family, community and civil society in the founding era.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/10/2021
Black Women have Shaped Politics in Boston for Centuries
by Kabria Baumgartner
From free speech to educational equity to fair housing, Black women in Boston have been at the front lines of challenging the city's political establishment to live up to ideals of democracy associated with the city. The presumptive mayor-elect Kim Janey will carry on that tradition.
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SOURCE: The Metropole
2/8/2021
“A New Jerusalem”–A Review Of The City-State Of Boston
Kristian Price reveiws Mark Peterson's study of Boston from its founding through the mid-19th century, which focuses on the contradiction of the Puritan ideal of a city of moral rectitude and the economic necessity of local merchants' enthusiastic participation in the slave trade.
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SOURCE: WGBH
11/27/2020
The Legacy Of Tunney Lee: Preserving The History Of Boston's Chinatown
An interdisciplinary panel of scholars discusses the contributions of the late MIT urban studies professor Tunney Lee to historic preservation and the relationship of immigrant communities to urban environments.
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
9/1/2020
“Nice White Parents,” “Fiasco,” and America’s Public-School Problem
Two podcasts address controversial aspects of racial integration in schooling, looking at contemporary New York and Boston in the late 1960s and 1970s.
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SOURCE: CommonWealth
8/4/2020
Faneuil Hall Name Change Needed
by Marty Blatt and David J. Harris
We might well ask whether Peter Faneuil actually paid for the building or whether it was purchased by the lives and freedom of those he transported and sold.
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SOURCE: Boston Globe
7/5/2020
MIT Professor Tunney Lee, an Architect, Urban Planner, and Historian of Chinatown, Dies at 88
“He was great public servant," said former Governor Michael S. Dukakis.
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SOURCE: Civil War Memory
6/26/2020
Should the Freedmen’s Memorial Stay or Go?
by Kevin M. Levin
In considering what to do about the emancipation memorial, academic observers would do well to consider the gap between their understanding of a statue's public impact and the way that black residents experience it.
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SOURCE: Boston Globe
2/27/2020
A Historian Finds Women, Children, and ‘Family History’ at the Boston Massacre
“What happens when we think of this as an event that is populated by women and children as well as just guys with guns?”
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SOURCE: Civil War Memory
6/26/19
Boston’s Black History is American History
by Kevin Levin
We still have a ways to go in reaching beyond the traditional narrative of history in Boston and beyond.
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4/14/19
The Spies' Marathon before Patriots Day
by William Lambers
A tale of a spy mission gone wrong and the history behind Patriots' Day.
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SOURCE: AP
2/22/19
Boston Mayor Mary Walsh Proposes Public History Project to Recognize Boston's Long Ties to Slavery
Boston is taking a step toward recognizing the role slavery played at one of its most visited landmarks.
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The Direct Line Between Slavery And Racism In Boston
by Janna Malamud Smith
When you live with a false story about your nation’s past ... developing an informed consensus for action becomes extremely difficult.
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SOURCE: Simon and Schuster (Special to HNN)
12/12/2018
This writer decided to write about the year 1721 after he got one of those Fact-a-Day calendars
He was intrigued by the entry noting that in 1721 Boston was hit by a devastating small pox epidemic. (Interview)
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SOURCE: WRAL
6-6-18
Boston Grapples With Faneuil Hall, Named for a Slaveholder
Peter Faneuil, one of the richest merchants in 18th century New England, was a slave owner. And he traded not only in sugar, molasses and timber, but in humans.
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SOURCE: WBUR
10-16-17
Tufts Project Maps The Landmarks Of Black Boston
The Tufts Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, together with the Tufts Data Lab, embarked on a mission to document significant sites that reflect local African-American history.
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SOURCE: The Boston Globe
6-3-17
Are Boston’s statues honoring all the right men?
Among the statues some are raising questions about is one for Columbus. Another is one honoring historian Samuel Eliot Morison.
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SOURCE: NYT
10-4-14
Edgar Allan Poe’s Feud With Boston? Nevermore
Poe’s snarly past with Boston will be set aside on Sunday, when the city officially welcomes the master of the macabre into its fold with the unveiling of a statue in his honor.
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SOURCE: NYT
8-13-13
Bulger guilty in gangland crimes
BOSTON — James (Whitey) Bulger, the mobster who terrorized South Boston in the 1970s and ‘80s, holding the city in his thrall even after he disappeared, was convicted Monday of a sweeping array of gangland crimes, including 11 murders. He faces the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.The verdict delivers long-delayed justice to Mr. Bulger, 83, who disappeared in the mid-1990s after a corrupt agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation told him he was about to be indicted. He left behind a city that wondered if he would ever be caught — and even if the F.B.I., which had been complicit in many of his crimes and had relied on him as an informer, was really looking for him.“This was the worst case of corruption in the history of the F.B.I.,” said Michael D. Kendall, a former federal prosecutor who investigated Mr. Bulger’s associates. “It was a multigenerational, systematic alliance with organized crime, where the F.B.I. was actively participating in the murders of government witnesses, or at least allowing them to occur.”...
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SOURCE: Boston.com
7-11-13
Body of Boston Strangler to be exhumed
Albert H. DeSalvo’s body will be exhumed to allow for new forensic testing that may conclusively prove DeSalvo murdered Mary Sullivan in her Boston apartment in 1964, the last killing attributed to the Boston Strangler who terrorized Greater Boston for two years in the early 1960s.Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said that a DNA match has been made between DeSalvo, the self-confessed Boston Strangler, and the murder of 19-year-old Sullivan, who was raped and murdered and “her body desecrated” in her Charles Street home on Jan. 4, 1964....
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