Boston history

This month, Plays in Place and The National Parks of Boston launch “Suffrage in Black and White,” a series of three site-specific plays addressing the intersection of race and citizenship through the lens of both the abolitionist and suffrage movements in Boston. Highlighting diverse local talent, one play will debut each year through 2026.

An effort by a local architect and urban planner would see a new historical trail, focused on the city’s abolition history, crossing downtown Boston from the West End to Chinatown.

In 1985, journalist J. Anthony Lukas published “Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families,” a nonfiction book exploring the busing crisis in Boston.

Inspired by the racial reckonings of 2020, The History Project, New England’s largest archives of LGBTQ materials, is working to flesh out its collection related to Black queer history.

The Boston African American National Historic Site’s “Faces of the 54th” soldier and officer database has collected the names and details of over 1,500 men who served with the volunteer 54th Massachusetts Regiment between 1863 and 1865, when the Civil War ended.

In early October, a memorial marker was installed at the end of Boston’s Long Wharf to acknowledge Boston’s history of slavery and to honor the Africans who died in and those who survived the transatlantic voyage known as the Middle Passage.

Long before the modern fight over safeguarding immigrants from deportation, the Shadrach Minkins case challenged Massachusetts’ status as a sanctuary state. The situation heated up after a new law required law enforcement officers to ignore the sanctuary status, and Boston’s mayor formally announced his intention to comply with the feds.

In the 1920s, the Cass family moved to Roxbury. With her husband Marshall’s support, Melnea A. Cass began what would be a long career as a volunteer community activist for human rights. It was in the 1930s that Cass began a lifetime of volunteer work on the local, state and national level.

Boston’s tradition of a multiracial affiliation for full equality continues. It’s a Boston thing that survives despite persistent vestiges of racial discrimination.

When taking a tour through Boston’s historic Chinatown, it is clear that the historic sites being pointed out along the way are under threat by developers taking advantage of the building boom.

The Fowler-Clark farm, an 18th-century Mattapan property, is now a modern urban farm facility operated by the Urban Farming Institute and is open to the public after a grand reveal of its restoration Monday.