roxbury

Every month from April to October, The American City Coalition (TACC) will host vibrant cultural and community events in Nubian Square as part of the Savor the Square initiative.

A new celebration of culture is coming to town in the form of the Greater Roxbury Arts & Cultural Center, a long-awaited space in Nubian Square that will celebrate Black and Latino culture and art.

For nearly 50 years, El Mondonguito, named for a stew of tripe and vegetables, has been a staple on Dudley Street where residents get a taste of San Juan. It’s not just about the food or the socializing. The restaurant, adorned in original Puerto Rican street art and murals, transports people back to their island homeland.

He jokes about the struggle of getting Dunkin’ iced coffee in subzero temperatures. But he can be serious too, like when he documents the historical landmarks in the neighborhood and when he outlines the racism Black Bostonians experienced during the era of court-ordered school desegregation.

In 1998, I went undercover as a motorist, driving with a friend through Brookline at 1 a.m. to determine how long it would take for police in the town to pull over a Black motorist. We lasted 20 minutes before three cruisers boxed us in on Beacon Street. An officer asked us whether we were lost and noted that I was from Roxbury.

Last Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren kicked off her reelection campaign at Hibernian Hall, striding into the Roxbury auditorium with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Gov. Maura Healey and Mayor Michelle Wu.

A development project currently under review by the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA) would bring 23 units of affordable and market-rate housing to the Garrison Trotter area of Roxbury.

It isn’t often in a city the size and density of Boston that the opportunity presents itself to re-imagine — and indeed rebuild — more than four acres of publicly-owned land in the heart of the city. But that is exactly what the sprawling parking lot along Harrison Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard, currently owned by the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, represents.

When Edmund Barry Gaither relocated to Roxbury from Atlanta in 1969, the idea of creating a museum in the predominantly Black Boston neighborhood was just a seed in the mind of Elma Lewis, who had just formed the National Center for Afro-American Artists a year earlier.

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.

On Saturday, Jan. 14 at 6:30 p.m., Hibernian Hall in Nubian Square will come alive with the age-old sound of storytelling. “Roxbury Roots II: You Don’t Know My Story,” is the second of these live storytelling events, designed to bring the community together and foster connectivity.

The park next to the Hawthorne Youth and Community Center in Roxbury’s Highland Park will once again come to life with the calming glow of lights this season.