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Boston



  • The Limits of Nonprofit Urban Development in Boston

    by Claire Dunning

    In Boston, nonprofit agencies became the principal vehicle for redevelopment. While they could empower residents of poor communities to compete for grants and negotiate with city authorities, they couldn't make a deep impact on inequality in the city and let city agencies off the hook for discriminatory policies. 


  • Bridget the Grocer and the First American Kennedys

    by Neal Thompson

    The history of the Irish immigrant Kennedys has long focused on its prominent men. A new book looks to JFK's grandmother Bridget Murphy Kennedy as the foundation of the family and a neglected figure for understanding immigration, urban life, and the changing of American politics.


  • The Night Vietnam Veterans Stormed Bunker Hill

    by Elise Lemire

    The Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 was a military defeat for the Continental Army but a coup for morale. In 1971, Vietnam Veterans Against the War won a nonviolent battle at the site for the allegiance of the working class residents of Charlestown. 



  • 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. 



  • 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. 



  • “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. 



  • 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.



  • 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.