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Silence Dogood's Precedented Times Series: Boston Resistance Then & Now
Date and time
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
In-person:
Event starts at 7pm, projections begin at 8pm

This panel discussion launches Silence Dogood’s Precedented Times Series at Old North Church. Supported by Mass Humanities’ Promises of the Revolution initiative, this new series builds on the Silence Dogood Project’s projection-based storytelling to create spaces for live civic dialogue, rooted in Boston’s deep tradition of public dissent and collective action.

Inspired by historic New England town halls, this series convenes conversations in the very buildings where Bostonians have gathered for generations to wrestle with questions of liberty, justice, and power. Each event pairs leading historians with contemporary organizers to explore how today’s most urgent challenges have clear historical precedent, and how that perspective can inspire meaningful action.

For this first event, the esteemed panelists examine the forces of oppression and resistance shaping 18th-century Boston in order to trace how those dynamics continue to resonate, and discuss how we can learn from the past to take action today.

During the discussion, audience members had the opportunity to contribute reflections and responses in real time. These collective insights shape a culminating, community-authored statement—projected onto the exterior of Old North Church as a powerful closing moment, transforming individual voices into a shared public declaration.

Diane Dwyer smiles in a blue and red illuminated room
Diane Dwyer
Diane Dwyer (she/her) is a Boston-based installation artist and experience designer dedicated to creating interpretive, inclusive, and imaginative environments. In 2025 she founded the Silence Dogood Project, which uses site-specific large-scale projections to connect Boston’s revolutionary past with today’s struggles for liberty.
Carol Rose with Constitution.png
Carol Rose
Carol Rose is the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. A lawyer and journalist, Carol has spent her career working for and writing about human rights and civil liberties, both in the United States and abroad including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Japan, Sri Lanka, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Northern Ireland, and Vietnam. Prior to assuming her position at the helm of the Massachusetts ACLU in January 2003, she was an attorney at the Boston law firm of Hill & Barlow, where she specialized in First Amendment and media law, intellectual property, civil rights, and international human rights law. While in private practice, Carol had the honor of serving as co-chair of Women in Communications Law of the ABA Forum on Communications Law, as a Vice Chair of the Human Rights committee of the ABA Individual Rights and Responsibilities section, and on the editorial board of the ABAs *Human Rights* magazine.
Rahsaan-Hall.jpg
Rahsaan D. Hall, Esq.
Rahsaan D. Hall serves as President & CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts (ULEM), where he leads the historic 106-year-old organization dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers and advancing racial and economic equity across Eastern Massachusetts. Since assuming leadership in 2023, Hall has guided ULEM to expand its programming across its five core pillars—employment, education, health, housing, and justice.
A black woman smiles in front of museum exhibit
Kyera Singleton
Kyera Singleton is the executive director of the Royall House and Slave Quarters. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in the Department of American Culture. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow for the Slavery, Colonialism, and their Legacies Project at Tufts University. Between 2021-2023, Kyera Singleton was an American Democracy Fellow, in the Charles Warren Center, at Harvard University. She has held prestigious academic fellowships from the Beinecke Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Emory University’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW).
A white woman with glasses and a green scarf smiling
Jane Kamensky
Jane Kamensky is President and CEO of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. A leading historian of early America and the United States, she worked for three decades as a professor and higher education leader, most recently as Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard University and Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. She brings to her work at Monticello a strong sense of civic purpose and a commitment to the ways that rigorous scholarship and compelling, honest storytelling help to build citizen capacity and revitalize the American experiment.
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