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Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas

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Museum of African American History

The Museum of African American History was founded to preserve and interpret the contributions of people of African descent and those who have found common cause with them in the struggle for liberty and justice for all Americans. Through permanent and rotating exhibits, a wide range of public and education programs ranging from debates to concerts, and summer youth camps to Underground Railroad Overnight Adventures, it places the African American experience in an accurate social, cultural and historical perspective. Incorporated in 1967, the Museum is nationally and internationally known for The African Meeting House, a National Historic Landmark, and Abiel Smith School on Boston's Beacon Hill, The African Meeting House on Nantucket, and Black Heritage Trails® in Boston and Nantucket.

https://www.maah.org/

  • Free People of Color in New England

    Thu, Apr 22, 2004
    A panel discusses New England's role in the conduct of the slave trade and the recent compilation of data related to that trade that makes this an auspicious time to examine new research in this area. New England's pride in its abolitionist heritage has long obscured the presence of slavery in the region for over 200 years from its first founding to the institution's ultimate demise through schemes of gradual emancipation.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Museum of African American History

  • Memory of the Slave Trade in New England

    Fri, Apr 23, 2004
    A panel discusses the way New England's pride in its abolitionist heritage has obscured the presence of slavery in the region for over 200 years, from its first founding to the institution's ultimate demise through schemes of gradual emancipation. Though New England's role in the conduct of the slave trade is perhaps better known, the recent compilation of data related to that trade makes this an auspicious time to examine new research in this area.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Museum of African American History

  • Revisiting Brown: Did It Make a Difference?

    Wed, May 12, 2004
    A distinguished panel discusses the impact of Brown vs. the Board of Education, 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision. Moderated by Carmen Fields, director of media relations, KeySpan Energy New England, the panel includes Margaret A. Burnham, associate professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law; Nancy Gertner, US district court judge for the District of Massachusetts; Jonathan Kozol, author and activist; Charles Ogletree Jr., Jesse Climenko professor of law at Harvard Law School; Robert V. Ward Jr., dean of the Southern New England School of Law; and Dianne Wilkerson, state senator of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. It was particularly fitting that the Museum commemorate the landmark Brown decision given the historic significance of its site, the Abiel Smith School, which was a the center of the first school desegregation case filed in the United States, Roberts v. the City of Boston (1850). The Abiel Smith School, located at 46 Joy Street on Beacon Hill, Boston and opened in 1835, was the first public school in the country to be erected specifically as a segregated school for African American primary and secondary school-aged children. Prompted by a gift from white philanthropist Abiel Smith, the City of Boston opened the Smith School on Beacon Hill. However, the building lacked the adequate space and equipment for a quality education. Benjamin Franklin Roberts, a black printer, sued the city after his 5-year-old daughter, Sarah, had been denied admission to the primary school closest to her home in the West End and was told to go to the Smith School, more than a mile away. In 1850, the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided against Roberts stating that the Boston School Committee had fulfilled its obligation to provide a "separate but equal" educational program. Forty-six years later, the US Supreme Court relied principally upon this rationale in establishing the "separate but equal doctrine", announced in Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896). This doctrine was unanimously reversed 58 years later by the US Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
    Civil Rights Movement Series
    Partner:
    Museum of African American History

  • Impact of the Black Press on Social Movements

    Wed, Nov 16, 2005
    Producer Callie Crossley leads a panel of black journalists in a discussion on the power of the black press in social movements. Since the establishment of the first black newspaper in 1827, African-American journalists have had a dynamic effect on the economic, social and political evolution of the African-American community, fearlessly covering the major stories and movements facing African-Americans.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Museum of African American History

  • Complicity: How The North Profited From Slavery

    Thu, Jan 12, 2006
    Conventional wisdom is challenged as Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, the authors of *Complicity: How The North Promoted, Prolonged, And Profited From Slavery*, discuss their findings in a public talk. A century and a half after the end of the Civil War, most Americans still think of slavery as a purely Southern institution. The enduring image of American bondage is that of lines of black men and women picking cotton on a plantation in a Southern state. In fact, the North was equally responsible for American slavery, as shown by the authors of Complicity. Before the Civil War, Northern industries such as textiles and shipbuilding flourished as a result of the free labor of millions of black people. The only difference was that Northerners could profit from slavery at a distance and were in a better position to deny their complicity. The Boston Public Library and the Museum of Afro-American History are offering the Words of Thunder Lowell Lecture Series to honor the bicentennial of the birth of William Lloyd Garrison, Boston abolitionist and editor of The Liberator. The lecture series is designed to continue Garrison's efforts to expand the public's knowledge of slavery and of collaborative efforts of abolitionists.
    Forum Network
    Partner:
    Museum of African American History