Events

Join the Jamaica Plain Historical Society to celebrate Women's History Month with a Zoom reading of the play Sophia Hayden Deserves Better by Stephanie Alison Walker. In 1891 a brilliant 23-year-old woman from Jamaica Plain won an architecture contest to design the Woman’s Building for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. What should have been the start to a flourishing career in architecture became career-ending. Throughout the two-year process of building The Woman’s Building, the architect quietly endured bullying, micromanaging and undermining…

Ever since the triumphant debut of the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, few literary characters have led such colorful lives or matched her influence or capacity for reinvention in poetry, drama, fiction, and film. Harvard Assistant Professor of English Anna Wilson and Marion Turner, author of The Wife of Bath: A Biography, will discuss how Chaucer’s character related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century—from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to…

This is a hybrid event. FREE for MHS Members. $10 per person fee (in person). No charge for virtual attendees or Card to Culture participants (EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare). The in-person reception starts at 5:30 and the program will begin at 6:00. Please visit here to register. Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led an extraordinary life. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a…

Participants will learn about grant publicity requirements and explore and share best practices for attracting audiences,  media coverage, and social media engagement. A 2023 press kit will be made available.   Register for event: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZModuGupj0oHtxklBWScx-PMnW3rdKGavxs          

This is a hybrid event. FREE for MHS Members. $10 per person fee (in person). No charge for virtual attendees or Card to Culture participants (EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare). The in-person reception starts at 5:30 and the program will begin at 6:00. Please visit here to register. After the Revolutionary War ended, the new American nation grappled with a question about its identity: Were the states sovereign entities or subordinates to a powerful federal government? The War of 1812 brought this issue into…

Join us to learn something new every month! Our Talks will feature presentations by local authors, academics, business owners, and history buffs in our Gallery. In March we will host Ken Gloss, proprietor of the Brattle Book Shop in Boston. Ken will share about some of his favorite finds and the joys of “the hunt” as well as explain what makes books and manuscripts rare and what determines whether they increase in value. He has many fascinating anecdotes to share…

This is a hybrid event. FREE for MHS Members. $10 per person fee (in person). No charge for virtual attendees or Card to Culture participants (EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare). The in-person reception starts at 5:30 and the program will begin at 6:00. Please visit here to register. In the late 18th century, planters in the Caribbean and the American South insisted that only Black people could labor on plantations, arguing that Africans, unlike Europeans, had bodies particularly suited to cultivate crops in hot…

Found Artistry exhibit is aimed at opening a conversation with visitors, either by asking more questions or sharing the knowledge that we have. We may not be able to answer these questions right away but can surely take a moment to appreciate the history that built Danvers and be inspired to create more history for the future generation.

Found Artistry exhibit is aimed at opening a conversation with visitors, either by asking more questions or sharing the knowledge that we have. We may not be able to answer these questions right away but can surely take a moment to appreciate the history that built Danvers and be inspired to create more history for the future generation.

Found Artistry exhibit is aimed at opening a conversation with visitors, either by asking more questions or sharing the knowledge that we have. We may not be able to answer these questions right away but can surely take a moment to appreciate the history that built Danvers and be inspired to create more history for the future generation.

Stock up on holiday gifts! Postcards for everyone! Thousands of cards! 4 top dealers! Are you a postcard collector looking for holiday gifts? Interested in local history? Come see! Browse vintage and historic postcards offered by 4 top dealers! Hundreds of categories with special attention to local towns and sites! Reserve your spot today or purchase tickets at the door. Penny Chronicles and the Stories They Tell is an exhibition about the history of Somerville through the vintage postcard. “Postcard Show…

From Stonewall Inn in 1969 to the Trans Resistance March in Boston on June 12, 2021, Black trans women and non-binary people have led the vanguard on the path toward a true freedom- one that is intersectional and layered. But the Pride Movement has whitewashed both history and the present. #PrideExtended, an initiative founded by Mercedes Loving-Manley, is a benefit festival and mutual aid initiative highlighting Black trans and non-binary talent with live performances and film screenings. It honors Black…

This two-part program will be live streamed on June 12 and June 26, at 3pm through our Youtube Channel! Featuring Demita Frazier, Co-Founder of the Combahee River Collective “The fecundity and power of oceanic and fresh water meeting in the brackish wetlands of sweet grasses, that is us as Black women coming together.” -Demita Frazier (2021) At the confluence of the Combahee, history was made. Yet long since forming the name-sake radical socialist Black Feminist Combahee River Collective in Boston…

“The fecundity and power of oceanic and fresh water meeting in the brackish wetlands of sweet grasses, that is us as Black women coming together.”  -Demita Frazier (2021)   At the confluence of the Combahee, history was made. Yet long since forming the name-sake radical socialist Black Feminist Combahee River Collective in Boston in 1974 and co-publishing the landmark statement in 1977, Collective Co-Founder Demita Frazier remains eyes forward. And basic justice remains elusive. And capitalism’s chokehold tightens. And academic…