Digital Exhibit Collections
Welcome to the EBBDA’s digital exhibit collections! We invite you to explore our collections, which look at the various movements, locations, art, and rhetoric of Black figures and coalitions that shaped Boston’s history and its present. A digital exhibit is an online publication that makes some sort of argument about pre-twentieth-century Black Boston, while considering (1) multimodality, (2) interpretation, (3) information, and (4) collaboration. Exhibits are often formatted like a “book chapter” or short wiki, with an introduction, background info, narrative elements, and Resources for further research. All of the exhibits featured on the website are crowd-sourced and many were created by Northeastern students. We look forward to hosting more exhibits created by Boston community members.
Our collection includes exhibits on: Important Figures, Places & Maps, Texts, Literature & Arts, Black Citizenship & Service, The Black Press, Social Movements and Spiritualities, Contemporary Connections, and Scholarly Analysis & Criticisms . These collections seek to bring awareness and celebrate the variety of materials and content about the vibrant Black Boston communities.
If you are interested in learning more about EBBDA digital exhibits or creating your own, please contact us at EarlyBlackBostonDigitalAlmanac@gmail.com and fill out the form linked below! We want this site to be a space of collaboration and community, so please do contribute!
Who are some important figures in Boston? This collection of exhibits features figures Black figures who shaped Boston's history, and thusly, its present. This collection is no means exhaustive, but rather a starting point, which we will continue to add to.
This collection of exhibits engages with pre-twentieth-century representations of texts, arts, and other forms of cultural production. These exhibits showcase the diversity of Blackness and the heterogeneous ways that culture, history, resistance, and being are represented.
The Black Citizenship & Service collection showcases what legal citizenship looked like in pre-twentieth century Boston for Black communities. Our exhibits juxtapose the liberatory efforts of Black freedom fighters and public intellectuals against the disenfranchisement of Black people as citizens in the Americas, since the 16th century and still today.
The Black Press collection revolves around conceptualizations of the Black Press. The Black Press marks resistance against literacy laws in the United States, and Black print publications were central modalities for learning, sharing knowledge, and depicting Black American culture and experiences from the perspectives of Black people.
What is education history? How have Black people experienced education differently, and what does that have to do with Black citizenship? The Social Movements & Spiritualities collection gathers important texts and figures for a conversation about Black literacy experiences.
What does it mean to reckon with the afterlives of slavery everyday? The Contemporary Connections collection engages 20th and 21st century public arts, activism, and community engagement efforts focused on Black histories in Boston. We’ve gathered work from Black Boston artists including murals and poetry, conducted one-on-one interviews, and developed exhibits about how a legacy of protest continues to connect early Black Boston with Boston today.
This collection of exhibits highlights theoretical and formal scholarly and cultural engagements with aspects of early Black Boston’s texts and histories. This collection attempts to make known the impact and significance of the work being discussed whilst critically engaging with key forms, genres, and content associated with Early Black Boston.