Black History

Black History Month has arrived, and Boston is ready to celebrate. Engage with history, literature, art and music celebrating the Black experience at these events happening around the city.

After Martin Luther King Jr. had settled in for his studies at Boston University in the fall of 1951, one of his priority non-academic tasks was to make three vital contacts in Roxbury.

Martin Luther King Jr. touched Boston, and Boston touched him. Being in Boston was an important part of his life, and his presence here during the 1950s and 60s is part of the city’s history.

Boston shares a distinction with Montgomery, Alabama; Chester, Pennsylvania; and Atlanta, Georgia. They are the only places the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King lived for any length of time during his 39 years on earth. Yet, unlike these other cities that King once called home — and many other major U.S. cities — Boston has until now had no major monument to the slain civil rights leader.

First-time visitors to the Volunteer State, with its deep wellspring of musical heritage and Black history, will find flavors of both throughout Tennessee, but no place rivals Memphis for its evocation of Black musical traditions and the struggle for equal rights.

After months of discussion, a proposed holiday to mark the end of slavery in Massachusetts is one step closer to becoming law. At the end of October, both branches of the state legislature passed a bill that would mark July 8 as “Emancipation Day.”

“Here Lies Darby Vassall” is a co-production between the historic Christ Church on Garden Street and Harvard University’s Critical Conservation program that explores the history of enslaved people in the area that helped build not only the church, but also the city and region.

HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — If you are or know of any relatives of Andy Johnson, who was last heard from while a student at the University of Cincinnati in the late 1940s, call the Orange County Courthouse in this town.

The Boston City Council last week unanimously approved a measure to “acknowledge, condemn and apologize for the role played by the City of Boston in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Hundreds of dignitaries gathered in front of the State House last week for the rededication of the newly-restored Robert Gould Shaw 54th Massachusetts Regiment memorial.

Deyaha Moussa was a Muslim kidnapped in West Africa, purchased in Saint-Domingue by T.H. Perkins of the eponymous School for the Blind, and who witnessed the Haitian Revolution combust. Perkins’ brother trafficked Moussa to Boston in 1793. He died in 1831 and now rests anonymously in Mattapan under a giant Celtic cross.