Black History

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey signed an executive order Monday creating a new panel tasked with advising the administration on ways to help support empowerment efforts in the state’s Black community. The 33-member Governor’s Advisory Council on Black Empowerment held its first closed-door meeting at the Statehouse on Monday. The panel will offer Healey guidance on issues related to the...

A reminder that slavery is a not-so-distant part of our history: Daniel Smith Sr. was born in 1932 to a 70-year-old father who was once in bondage in Virginia.

Some 2,500 miles from Boston, community leaders are getting their first look at something years in the making. In a workshop in Walla Walla, Washington, more than 100 workers are putting together “The Embrace,” a sculpture memorializing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King. King Boston, the nonprofit behind “The Embrace,” is in Walla Walla this…

We’re getting an exclusive, under-construction look at what could be the most significant public art project in Boston history.

A bold new venture bringing greater equity to the art of American Opera is running through Boston’s neighborhoods, on the same weekend as Juneteenth. The Boston Modern Orchestra Project is co-producing five operas in five years and each of them chronicles the life of a Black American historical figure. The first in the series of five is on Malcolm...

The Boston Modern Orchestra Project is co-producing five operas in five years and each of them chronicles the life of a Black American historical figure. The first in the series of five is on Malcolm X, a work called “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X”.

Jazz Dottin stops by The Hub Today to talk about her wildly popular YouTube series about Black history in Massachusetts.

Many cities claim to have celebrated Memorial Day first, but the true earliest version of the commemoration — organized by Black residents of Charleston, South Carolina — was nearly erased from history.

The first Memorial Day, organized by Black residents of Charleston, South Carolina, was nearly erased from history. In 1865, a group of Black Charlestonians exhumed a mass, unmarked grave filled with the bodies of Union soldiers, and then gave them proper burials. LX News storyteller Jalyn Henderson speaks with David Blight, a historian who uncovered the Memorial Day history —...

Teachers have long sought ways to deliver a complete version of U.S. history that engages their young students and includes contributions by people of color

Over roughly 60 years from the 1910s to 1970, 6 million Black Americans packed what they could and took the nearest train, bus, or horse and buggy out of the South. Many were searching for better lives for their families, economic parity, to get away from Jim Crow laws — “everything that was stifling to them in the South,” said…

Over 60 years in the 20th century, about 6 million Black people moved from rural communities in the South to cities in the North and West to get away from Jim Crow laws and search for economic opportunity — including the family of NBCLX storyteller Jalyn Henderson. She shares her aunt’s and uncle’s perspective on the history of this period,...

Mainers and others across New England are mourning the loss of Ashley Bryan, a prolific, award-winning children’s author and illustrator whose work has been displayed across the country.

The Round Rock Black Parents Association mobilized against calls to remove a book on the history of racist ideas in the U.S. from the school reading list.

A record 66.6 million tourists visited New York City in 2019 and business was booming for Stacey Toussaint, founder of diversity and inclusion-centered Inside Out Tours. But when the coronavirus pandemic brought the city to a standstill, Toussaint was left to figure out how to keep her tourism business running when there simply were no tourists.

A new Broadway show opened for the first time during the pandemic, and that’s not the only reason “Thoughts of a Colored Man” is making history.

The brick foundation of one the oldest Black churches in the United States has been unearthed by archeologists at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.