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.
Vietnam War veteran Robert Vinson talks about his experiences in Vietnam and returning home on leave during the war and after his service in the war, including his struggle with PTSD and use of massage and movement therapy.
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.
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.
Tom Crouch, Chairman of Aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum, discusses the Wright brothers' invention of the airplane, placing it in the context of the centuries-long study of flight and of the enormous impact airplanes have had on human life.
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."
Professor Gary Nash discusses the conditions of the fifth of the population who were African American during the Revolutionary War and in its aftermath. Nash explores the escape of slaves to join the British and the conditions African Americans faced in the colonies after the war. His presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
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.
Biographer Charles Calhoun looks at the life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the society he encouraged and kept at his Craigie House, which included many major writers and intellectuals of the day.
The audio of this lecture is available independently as an mp3 file.