Past Grants Awarded

Mass Humanities funding will support the final steps of oral history digitization - transcriptions and metadata entry and permanent cataloguing at UMASS. The newly digitized oral histories will be presented on a new section of the BCHS website. The BCHS will also present three facilitated discussions of underrepresented local histories throughout the spring of 2022.

A self-guided audio walking tour that explores the nuanced local history of Peskeompskut, an important Native American settlement sieged during King Phillips War. Through their smart phone, listeners will connect to personal, historic and interpretive narratives by Indigenous and local history partners housed on a story app site. (STQRY) Funding will support the writing and recording of these narratives, costs associated with the app, and advertising.

Freedom in Season, a new play based on Larry Spotted Crow Mann’s 3rd great grandfather Samuel Vickers, Union Army Civil War veteran. Living Presence of Our History Pt. VI: A Conversation on Continued Oppression and Erasure Through Public Plaques, Memorials, and Statuary will be a panel of scholars and local Indigenous people.

Mass Humanities funding will support the creation of a shooting script, treatment, trailer, and a ten-minute work sample that is necessary to raise funding for the production and post-production of the film.

An oral history project focusing on four Jewish immigrant communities in Massachusetts, which will result in the digital archiving of interviews and an online exhibit for all to access. Mass Humanities funding will support recording equipment, transcription services, stipends and travel reimbursements for interviewers, honoraria, community stakeholder meetings, and a launch reception.

Mass Humanities funding will support a humanities scholar to research and write a new interpretive plan for the Museum highlighting the lives of indigenous, enslaved, indentured, and day laborers on the site. It will also fund the free public launch celebration of this reinterpretation initiative including honoraria for speakers and consultants.

Newly collected stories of historically vulnerable communities of Worcester, resulting in a) an expanded archive and b) public programs on the experiences of Latino, LGBTQ+, Black residents and those who intersect identities. In partnership with Latino History Project of Worcester, LGBTQ+ Worcester FOR THE RECORD, and Worcester Black History Project, guided by Humanities Advisor Stephanie Yuhl.

Interpretive exhibits and programming for an African American heritage site and cultural center at the Clinton A.M.E. Zion Church in Great Barrington. Mass Humanities funding will be used to formulate specific components that address the themes and goals outlined in CCR’s interpretive plan. Work will entail research and the development of program content, exhibit narratives, schematic-level designs, graphics, and media treatments.

New archival research on slavery in Medford and the people enslaved by the Royall family, in order to relaunch website interpretation through a new virtual exhibit, tour revisions, and community conversations about the local history of slavery and its legacies today. Mass Humanities funding will support scholarly research, writing exhibit text, and exhibit design.

Mass Humanities funding will support a humanities advisor, research assistant and website designer for the podcast site of The Slave is Gone: The Show That Talks Back to Apple TV’s Dickinson. This will feature episodes and capsule stories and images collected and written by the researcher and advisor of lesser-known locals of Native, African-descent, white Yankee and immigrant background, some gender non-conformists, and largely known to Amherst’s most famous daughter.

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with New Democracy Coalition of MA Inc

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with the Marion Art Center, Inc.

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Worcester Roots

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Community Action Agency of Somerville

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Freedom House, Inc.

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with New Bedford Historical Society, Inc.

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with City of Newton Cultural Development Department

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with The Jamaica Plain Tuesday Club, Inc. DBA The Loring Greenough House

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Swampscott Public Library

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Plainfield Reads

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Somerville Museum

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Old Parish Preservation Volunteers, Inc.

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Forbes House Museum

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Historical Society of Old Newbury

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Sharon Historical Society

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with South Congregational Church

Supporting three online events: The Slavery and Servitude Roundtable An Evening with a Garden in the Woods Loring Greenough Interpretation Fellows Presentation

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with The Helene Johnson and Dorothy West Foundation For Artists In Need

Supporting three online events: Honoring Edwin Noble the Winchester veteran who fought to save Poland from Russia w/Ellen Knight Abraham Lincoln & Leadership in Turbulent Times with Harvard professor & historian Nancy Koehn ‘Lest we forget’. Remembering the Holocaust with Winchester resident Jerry Blaine.

Supporting three online events: Remember Me to Lebanon: The Story of Early Arab American Immigrants to Boston Boston's Haymarket and the Market District Otis House: Witness to History

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with Cape Cod Cape Verdean Museum and Cultural Center, Inc

Supporting one online event: Living with the Atomic Bomb: 1945-1965

Supporting three online events: The Global Future of Devens The Unseen Foe: Camp Devens in the 1918 Influenza Epidemic The Four Legacies of Edith Nourse Rogers

Supporting three online events: The Moses B. Paige Company: The Last of the Peabody Potteries Local 21's Quest for a Moral Economy Fire! Boston Burning

Supporting three online events: Lunch & Learn: 400 Years Ago - A Look Back at Spring 1621 Lunch & Learn: 400 Years Ago - A Look Back at Fall 1621 Lunch & Learn: 400 Years Ago - A Look Back at Winter 1621

Supporting three online events: Midcentury Modern in Fitchburg: Carl Koch's Fitchburg Paper Building Uruguay's World Cup Victory of 1951: A look at Soccer history Experiencing Fitchburg's Abolitionist History

Supporting three online events: June Carmichael Fitzgerald, WWII WAVES and Parachute Rigger (1921- 2017) The Story of Allen and Mary Hinton - Entrepreneurs, Formerly Enslaved Addison B. LeBoutillier - Architect, Artist and Designer (1872 - 1951)

Supporting three online events: Author & Illustrator Talk: Twenty-One Steps - Guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Solider The Cottingley Fairies: Doyle, Spiritualism, and a Hoax Plants Go to War

A community reading of Frederick Douglass’s speech on the meaning of the 4th of July with The Helene Johnson and Dorothy West Foundation For Artists In Need

Supporting three online events: The Black Community in Revolutionary Cambridge Three Centuries of Black Cambridge How Have the Arts Mended Cambridge?