black history

On the night before Juneteenth, hundreds of members of the Black community and their allies commemorated the 72nd wedding anniversary and the civil rights legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King and honored local leaders committed to building a more racially just and equitable city.

The daughters of two associates of Martin Luther King Jr. from his Boston years recently unveiled a plaque in Roxbury where he attained membership in the nation’s oldest Black collegiate fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha.

When two white men entered Joseph Clash’s North End barbershop on Feb. 2, 1863, he probably thought little of their arrival. A well-known figure in the neighborhood where most Blacks lived in Boston at the time, Clash had made a career of catering to the needs of whites in his various enterprises, which included a restaurant, a dance hall, a catering business and, for a short time, a brothel.

When I was growing up, my mom would never miss the Roxbury Homecoming celebration. Even as she got older, we would stake out a spot the night before and return the next day and set up our cooler, food and chairs for the community picnic that’s been taking place in Franklin Park for decades.

In April 1965, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march from Carter Playground on the edge of Roxbury to Boston Common. It was a rally that called for action on civil rights and segregation in schools.

“Beautiful, bustling, and Black”—that was how author, attorney and activist Hannibal B. Johnson described the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in his book “Black Wall Street: From Riot to Renaissance in Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District.”

As I reflect on Black History Month 2025, I’m reminded why my late husband, Roland, and I wrote “Still I Rise: A Cartoon History of African Americans,” followed by our updated edition “Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans.”

As we celebrate Black History Month, we honor the rich, diverse and powerful stories that have shaped and continue to shape our culture, history and future. At ROXFILM, we revel in the strength, resilience and creativity of our ROXFILM family and beyond as they continue to amplify voices that have been overlooked or underrepresented.

My mother once said to me that history is the skeleton inside a living country. It made sense to me that if we haven’t formed a clear understanding of what happened and why, how are we to make good decisions going forward?

What will historians say a century from now about this moment in Black history? Looking back, will they see the first quarter of the 21st century as a pivotal moment of retrenchment, comparable to the imposition of Jim Crow after the promises of the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction?

Each year when the calendar flips to February, we as a nation train our collective focus on the stories of Black people in American history, highlighting some of the myriad achievements, accomplishments and contributions we’ve made, indispensable fibers woven into the great tapestry that is the United States

The power of Dorothy Height’s words, “I want to be remembered as one who tried,” strikes at the heart of Boston’s Black legacy. We are here because of all the ancestors who tried, those whose triumphs were blocked, those who persisted and those who succeeded.