Ed McCabe and Lory Newmyer of the Hull Lifesaving Museum examines Boston's past as a major shipping port and a center for the development of marine lifesaving devices and shipwreck prevention measures. They focus on the devices and procedures used by the men of the United States Life-Saving Service in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
John Quincy, Jr., 11th-generation descendent of the New England Quincy family, traces the history of the family, a dominant force in area politics (the Boston mayorage passed from Quincy father to son for several generations).
Archaeologist Ellen Berkland and curator Elizabeth Carella review the history of Boston Harbor's Rainsford Island since 1636. After a brief overview of recent efforts to manage the island, they review archaeological discoveries pointing to the island's many historical uses, particularly as they relate to Boston's marginalized populations.
Congressman John Lewis, who at 23 spoke at the 1963 March on Washington as chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, leads a discussion on the planning, implementation, and effect the first March on Washington had on the country. The presentation includes footage of Lewis's 1963 speech at the March.
Hubie Jones, assistant to the Urban Affairs chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, provides an overview of the issue of race, and, in particular, the status of African Americans in Boston over the past 50 years.
PhD candidate Margot Minardi discusses Boston abolitionist activity, particularly its use of Revolutionary War resonances in its propaganda and oratory. The presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
Julie Winch discusses the highly successful African-American Remond family and their business of catering lavish parties in Boston and Newport in the 1800s. Winch focuses on the Remonds as free African Americans and supporters of abolitionism during the era of slavery.
This lecture discusses African-American social organization and antislavery activism in Antebellum Boston.
According to the WGBH website:
"Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. (1874-1954) was a Boston writer and bachelor bon vivant, best known for having preserved his family's Beacon Street home as a museum of Victorian style and taste. The Wounded Eros, a short documentary film by Todd Gernes, explores the aesthetic relationship between Gibson's literary production and the material culture contexts of his museum and library, set within the social history of turn-of-the-century gay Boston. Following the film, a dramatic reading, These Four Walls: A History of a Romantic Friendship, directed by Jacqueline Romeo and featuring John Anderson and Aleksander Feliks Wierzbicki, will extend the exploration of Gibson's life by depicting his enduring relationship with the eccentric self-styled "Count" Maurice de Mauny Talvande."
Biographer and history professor James O'Toole describes the lives of the Healy brothers, children of a multiracial slave couple, in mid-19th-century East Coast society. Three of the brothers successfully passed as white and gained prominent social positions: one as a a bishop; one as Georgetown University's president; and one as a priest, rector, and seminary director.