Forum Network

A portrait of late 19th-century Boston and one of its most daring and celebrated women, Isabella Stewart Gardner – the connoisseur and visionary collector who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city.

When Isabella Stewart Gardner first arrived in Boston in 1861, she was twenty years old, newly married to a wealthy trader, and unsure of herself. Puzzled by the frosty reception she received from the city’s coterie of “bluebloods,” she strived to fit in and had limited success. Then after two devastating tragedies, she discovered her true spirit and passion for collecting. When Isabella opened her Italian palazzo-style home as a museum 1903 to showcase her old masters, antiques, and objects d’art, she was well-known for scandalizing Boston’s upper society.

The Lioness of Boston is historical fiction – a richly detailed portrait of a time, also a cultural and social history. Author Emily Franklin reveals the day’s mores and expectations which Isabella, a feminist before feminism, rejected, opting instead for friendships with painter John Singer Sargent; writers Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Sarah Orne Jewett; and neighbor Julia Ward Howe. With novelist Claire Messud, Franklin discusses her process for researching and bringing to life this remarkable woman – her friends, her family, and her era.

Presented by the American Inspiration series from American Ancestors/NEHGS in partnership with Boston Public Library.

The dramatic and uplifting story of legendary outdoorsman and conservationist JohnMuir’s quest to protect one of America’s most magnificent landscapes, Yosemite.

“Everybody needs beauty, as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” —John Muir

In this portrait of a place, a time, and a movement, the bestselling author Dean King takes us behind the scenes, to the beginning of America’s love affair with Yosemite Valley. In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir—iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher—met face-to-face with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair ventured to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site Muir had visited twenty years earlier. There, they confronted a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries had plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” The rest is history: that watershed moment led to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launched an environmental battle that at once captivated the nation and ushered in the beginning of the American environmental movement. Join us for King’s illustrated presentation of his riveting new book, Guardians of the Valley, “a rich, enjoyable excursion into a seminal period in environmental history.” (The Wall Street Journal)

Likely the last in her family line to qualify for tribal citizenship with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Leah Myers elegantly blends Native folklore, personal history, and the search for identity in this highly anticipated memoir, Thinning Blood.

Because of her tribe’s strict blood quantum laws, Leah Myers may be the last of her family to be formally recognized as a member of her tribe. For her, this realization carries with it a responsibility to preserve her heritage and her ancestors’ memory. Thinning Blood is Myers’s attempt to capture a record of her family’s history, presenting the stories of four generations of women. Beginning with her great-grandmother, the last full-blooded Native member in their lineage, she connects each woman with her totem to construct her family’s totem pole: protective Bear, defiant Salmon, compassionate Hummingbird, and perched on top, Raven. Myers weaves together tribal folktales, the history of the Native genocide, and Native mythology. With fresh perspectives and profound insight, she offers crisp and powerful vignettes of her own life between White and Native worlds. Thinning Blood is at once a bold reclamation of her female identity and a searingly honest meditation on heritage, family, and what it means to belong.

Leah Myers is in conversation with Kaitlin Curtice, also author, poet-storyteller and member of the Potawatomi nation.

King mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge a deeper understanding of “the leader, the preacher, the orator, the husband, the father, the martyr, the human being…in all his heroic, tragic Glory. Hallelujah!" (Ken Burns) King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. Bestselling biographer Jonathan Eig gives us an intimate view, casting fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. In this remarkable account of our only modern-day founding father, we gain an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements. Join us for Eig’s presentation and discussion with Peniel Joseph, Professor and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, The University of Texas at Austin, one day after the Juneteenth holiday. This talk is brought to you by American Ancestors New England Historical and Genealogical Society (NEHGS), the Boston Public Library and the Museum of African American History.

Return to Homepage

** A “fast-paced and highly absorbing” (Wall Street Journal) history of the fierce final chapter of the "Indian Wars," told through the lives of the two most legendary and consequential American Indian leaders, who led Sioux resistance and triumphed at the Battle of Little Bighorn**. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull: Their names are iconic, their significance in American history undeniable. Together, these two Lakota chiefs, one a fabled warrior and the other a revered holy man, crushed George Armstrong Custer’s vaunted Seventh Cavalry on June 25, 1876. Both had grown to manhood on the High Plains of the American West, in an era when vast herds of buffalo covered the earth, and when their nomadic people could move freely. The Battle of Little Bighorn was the beginning of the end for their treasured and sacred way of life. Drawing on a wealth of previously ignored primary sources, award-winning author Mark Lee Gardner delivers the definitive chronicle, thrillingly told, of these extraordinary Indigenous leaders. _The Earth Is All That Lasts_ is a grand saga, both triumphant and tragic, of their struggle to maintain the freedom of their people against impossible odds. Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS in partnership with GBH Forum Network. ### Resources - Books _Witness: A Hunkpapha Historian's Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas_ by Josephine Waggoner (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013) _The Crazy Horse Surrender Ledger_, edited by Thomas R. Buecker and R. Eli Paul (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical Society, 1994) _The Sitting Bull Surrender Census: The Lakotas at Standing Rock Agency, 1881_ by Ephriam D. Dickson III (Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2010) _Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy_ by Ernie LaPointe, Great-Grandson of Sitting Bull (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2009)

The dramatic story of W. E. B. Du Bois's reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I—and a new understanding of that era and of one of the great twentieth-century writers. When W. E. B. Du Bois, believing in the possibility of full citizenship and democratic change, encouraged African Americans to “close ranks” and support the Allied cause in World War I, he made a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life. For more than two decades Du Bois attempted to write the definitive history of Black participation in World War I. His book, however, remained unfinished. Drawing on a broad range of sources, most notably Du Bois’s unpublished manuscript and research materials, Williams tells the surprising story of this unpublished book, bringing new insight into Du Bois’s struggles to reckon with both the history and the troubling memory of the war. The Wounded World offers a fresh understanding of the life and mind of arguably the most significant scholar-activist in African American history. Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS in partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network.

**A paradigm-shattering biography of the celebrated poet Phillis Wheatley, whose extraordinary work set African American literature at the heart of the American Revolution.** Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed elegies for local elites and celebrated political events, adding her voice to a vibrant, multisided conversation about race, slavery, and discontent with British rule. In this new biography, the historian David Waldstreicher offers the fullest account to date of Wheatley’s life and works, correcting myths, reconstructing intimate friendships, and deepening our understanding of her verse and the revolutionary era. **David Waldstreicher** teaches history at the City University of New York Graduate Center and is the author of _Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification and Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin_, _Slavery, and the American Revolution_. He has written for The New York Times Book Review, Boston Review, and The Atlantic, among other publications. **Moderator L’Merchie Frazier** is a visual activist, public historian and artist, innovator, and poet. She is Executive Director of Creative / Strategic PLANNING for SPOKE Arts and former Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket, and was recently named an Art Commissioner for Massachusetts. Presented by the American Inspiration series from American Ancestors/NEHGS in partnership with Boston Public Library, Museum of African American History, and with GBH Forum Network.

A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow–era violence from a renowned legal scholar, this “meticulously researched and carefully documented” historical work presents ”dozens of fully fleshed out stories…examples, of course, of countless stories left untold.” (Booklist) Many may recognize the names of civil rights activists—from Rosa Parks to Medgar Evers to Martin Luther King Jr.—but they likely have little sense of the quotidian violence of Jim Crow, the system of white supremacy that prevailed between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. Now, the gap has been filled by author Margaret Burnham, Northeastern University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, and its archive of nearly one thousand cases of previously undocumented racial homicides between 1930 and 1955. Drawn from these archives and augmented by newspaper accounts, court testimony and rulings, coroner’s reports, and interviews with surviving witnesses, family, and clergy, _By Hands Now Known_ is essential reading. Those interested in race, history, and law will find it groundbreaking, illuminating, and moving. **Margaret A. Burnham** is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University and has been a staffer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights lawyer, a defense attorney, and a judge. A professor of law, she was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the US Senate to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board. **Moderator L’Merchie Frazier** is a visual activist, public historian and artist, innovator, and poet. She is Executive Director of Creative / Strategic PLANNING for SPOKE Arts and former Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket, and was recently named an Art Commissioner for Massachusetts. Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS, in partnership with Boston Public Library, Museum of African American History, and GBH Forum Network

Join us for a spirited debate between two celebrated journalists and bestselling authors: Who is the greatest athlete in American history: Jim Thorpe or Bo Jackson? Both made history on the field, and off. Votes will be counted! Some say that Jim Thorpe (1887-1953) was America’s greatest all-around athlete: a gold medalist at the 1912 Olympics in the decathlon and pentathlon; a star on the Carlisle Indian School’s football team and the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame; and a major league baseball player for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Other say Bo Jackson (b. 1962) tops the chart of all-time greats: the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports—and the only one to be named an All-Star in both baseball and football. Bo Jackson was a Heisman Trophy winner and a pop culture phenomenon. Despite their vast skills, both struggled against racism, both accomplished great things and reached stardom the American way: on the field of competition. Hear from two acclaimed writers, also super fans, about these remarkable athletes. Then cast your vote! Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS in partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network

Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS and Boston Public Library, in partnership with GBH Forum Network, a groundbreaking new biography of the celebrated painter John Singer Sargent and a page-turning exploration of an epochal time in art history, and in America. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is a great American artist who lived among and painted the opinion-leaders and society kingpins of his day. He is also an abiding mystery. Sargent scandalized viewers on both sides of the Atlantic with the frankness and sensuality of his work. He charmed his wealthy patrons, but reserved his greatest sympathies for Bedouins, Spanish dancers, and the gondoliers of Venice. At the height of his renown in Britain and America, Sargent quit his lucrative portrait-painting career. In _The Grand Affair_, the scholar Paul Fisher offers a vivid portrait of the buttoned-up artist and his unbuttoned work, following his trans-European childhood to his spirited travels as an adult to his late-life journeys with his friend and patron Isabella Stewart Gardner. Fisher’s illustrated talk and discussion provides insight into on Sargent’s extensive work at the Boston Public Library, the mural cycle “The Triumph of Religion.” This talk is modoerated by Meghan Weeks, an artist and cultural heritage professional with an academic background in historical structures, painting, and curating.