For this post, we’d like to revisit a collaboration between Boston Public Library and the Digital Commonwealth Inc. nonprofit. In 2022, BPL and DC Inc. applied for and received grant funding to hire an Education Fellow, with the goal of increasing usage of DigitalCommonwealth.org resources in the classroom. Lara DeRose worked with local educators, agencies, and other stakeholders over the course of her yearlong fellowship. We spoke with Lara about her work and how primary sources in social studies can benefit kids across Massachusetts.

An 1890 photograph titled, "Encyclopedia dedication at the Stony Brook School"
This photo captures an encyclopedia dedication at the Stony Brook School… maybe we should start having classroom smartboard dedications!

Can you give us the elevator pitch for what you’ve designed?  Researching Massachusetts teachers’ needs, we discovered that many of Digital Commonwealth’s resources connected to local history embedded in the elementary history and social science standards. There is also a dearth of curriculum resources for those early grade levels, as districts focus their resources on math and literacy in elementary school. In response, we built a model third grade unit that would teach students to properly research and interpret primary and secondary sources while having fun learning local history.  While this work was successful, curriculum development is arduous, and not a pathway that will be successful without a dedicated team or individual responsible for developing high quality, research-based educational curricula that can be tailored to MA communities. This process must be ongoing.

The current standard for curriculum units used in MA classrooms is very high, and a partnership might be the best option[…]. While hiring an individual with proficiency in instructional design, educational technology and content creation is a possibility, this might limit the ability to perform other important outreach activities. Clear roles and responsibilities should be defined within this team or for the individual connecting them to particular “fresh” content that has been or is being added [to the repository]. Collaboration with stakeholders, such as community librarians, museums, and grade level educators, will increase [the] success and use of these materials. Continuous feedback and updates from educators will ensure that the curricula remain relevant, engaging, and effective, allowing for iterative improvements over time.

Is there anything else in the country like what you’re designing – nevermind for free?!

Since we met with DESE [Mass. Department of Elementary & Secondary Education] last summer, they have acknowledged the lack of high quality instructional materials for elementary social studies. They have recruited several curriculum development groups that are releasing a few “Investigating History” grades 3 & 4 sample lesson plans to pilot this year. I see this as an opportunity for Digital Commonwealth to “crosswalk” their resources with the release to share how teachers can use Digital Commonwealth in conjunction with Investigating History. Digital access to Investigating History is free to all Massachusetts teachers.

Does local history/localized education have much of a role in schools nowadays?

Yes, local history is part of the frameworks educators are required to teach. Learning about local history can give students context when moving on to state, national or international topics and a deeper understanding of civics. Students will not only have a better understanding of social studies themes like “change over time” but local history topics will also increase families’ appreciation of their regional history and their local government.

What have been your favorite aspects of the work to this point? 

My favorite aspect of this work was exploring primary sources in Digital Commonwealth from local museums. As a former history teacher, I love collecting the individual stories that will connect students to history. This year I often fell down rabbit holes exploring photographs, artifacts, and letters. I am excited to stay connected with Digital Commonwealth, sharing and supporting opportunities for outreach.

A map titled, "A map of New-England, being the first that ever was here cut, and done by the best pattern that could be had, which being in some places defective, it made the other less exact; yet does it sufficiently shew the scituation of the country, and conveniently well the distance of places"
Here’s just one of the dozens of New England maps dated to before the 19th century you can find on DigitalCommonwealth.org!
Smith College Class of 1902 Basketball Team (C.1902), Wikimedia Commons.

More than a century ago, the first women’s collegiate basketball championship was played in Massachusetts between Smith College sophomores and freshman. “Smith March Madness 1892” is a 8:20 minute video about the game. Senda Berenson, known as the “Mother of Women’s Basketball” and Director of Physical Training at Smith, introduced the game of basketball, developed by James Naismith the year before, to her Smith students. “Major newspapers and magazines in the Northeast covered the championship game, and reporters equated the popularity of the event to the Harvard Yale men’s football game.”

Senda Berenson wrote an article entitled “Basket Ball for Women” in the September 1894 issue of Physical Education, available courtesy of Springfield College, Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections.  She says, “The value of athletic sports for men is not questioned. It is a different matter, however, when we speak of athletics for women. Until very recent years, the so-called ideal woman was a small waisted, small footed, small brained damsel, who prided herself on her delicate health, who thought fainting interesting, and hysterics fascinating. Wider and more thorough knowledge has given us more wholesome and saner ideas.”

Digital Commonwealth and other archives and libraries have helped to preserve and provide access to documents, images, and audio and video files related to women in sports. One example is the audio file for a lecture given at UMass in 1978 by Wilma Rudolph, bronze medalist in 1956 Olympics and three-time gold medalist in 1960. At the time of the lecture, she had just published her autobiography, Wilma, and hearing her story in her own voice is inspirational. In the audio file, she speaks of her upbringing as the 20th of 22 children in small-town Tennessee. As a child, the fastest woman in the world had survived pneumonia, scarlet fever, and polio, and wore a leg brace for much of her early life.

The challenges that Wilma Rudolph had to overcome were many. She graciously gave credit to the family members, friends, fellow athletes, and coaches who helped her along the way. As she tells her story, she says that there came a point when she had to have faith in herself in order to reach her full potential.

Wilma Rudolph at the finish line during 50 yard dash at track meet in Madison Square Garden (1961), Wikimedia Commons.

Wilma Rudolph was a world class athelete before Title IX was signed into law. She had to make her way on her own and with the support system that she was able to construct without the benefit of the law enshrining women’s rights.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”), signed into law on June 23, 1972, was designed to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs and activities in all public and private elementary and secondary schools, school districts, colleges, and universities receiving any Federal funds .Title IX has broader implications than just creating a level playing field for women athletes. But in the years since the law was passed, untold opportunities have opened up for women in sports.

Women’s Sport Foundation, “Chasing Equity: The Triumphs, Challenges, and Opportunities in Sports for Girls and Women” (2020), p 13.

The implementation of Title IX has had a rocky road. It was not clear in the original law exactly how educational institutions would balance spending for men’s and women’s athletic programs. Universities with men’s football and men’s basketball programs that were spending and generating vast sums of money felt threatened by the law. Digital Commonwealth provides a link to a 1979 MacNeil/Lehrer Report on Title IX Women’s Sports. In his introduction to the half hour video file, Robert MacNeil says “many people wonder whether glamorous, big-time, big-money college sports are threatened by the drive to give women an equal share in college athletics. Tonight, sex discrimination in sports, and the debate over a law called Title IX.”

Progress has not been easy. Digital Commonwealth and its member institutions will continue to provide access to documentation of the uphill battle for equity in sports for girls and women.

Barbara Schneider, Member Outreach and Education Committee

Women’s Cross Country Race (1995)
Courtesy of Springfield College, Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections.
Paul Revere, “The bloody massacre perpetrated in King-Street Boston : on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th regt.”(1770), Boston Public Library, Rare Books Department.

Paul Revere’s engraving, “The Bloody Massacre,” is part of Boston Public Library’s “Colonial and Revolutionary Boston”, one of Digital Commonwealth’s “Collections of Distinction”.

Scholars agree that Revere copied the arresting image in “The Bloody Massacre” from an engraving by Henry Pelham entitled “Fruits of Arbitrary Power, or the Bloody Massacre” (1770).  Pelham wrote to Paul Revere complaining about the theft of his intellectual property. “If you are insensible of the Dishonour you have brought on yourself by this Act, the World will not be so.” (Clarence Brigham, “Boston Massacre, 1770, ” Paul Revere’s Engravings (Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1954) ) .

While Henry Pelham may have felt that Paul Revere would be chastened for his appropriation of another man’s work, the world felt otherwise. “Certain it is that Revere was an outstanding patriot and saw the opportunity of furthering the patriot cause by circulating so significant a print.”(Brigham, p. 56).

Pelham, the artist who first rendered the image, was a Loyalist. In a letter to his sister-in-law, Susanna, the wife of John Singleton Copley, he wrote “Now we see this Country arming themselves and unsupported by any foreign Power ungenerously Waging War against their great Benefactors, and endeavouring to Ruin that State to whom they owe their being. . . “ ( Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739-1776 , Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914, p. 344)  The Copleys had left Boston for England in 1774, and Henry would follow them in 1776.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, “The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid, or ‘The Executions’” (1814), Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Call to Arms or Lamentation?

On the one year anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Paul Revere put together a striking exhibit in the windows of his home, displaying work depicting the “Tyranny of the British Administration of Government.” “The Bloody Massacre” was included in the illuminated display. The Boston Gazette reported that “the Spectators, which amounted to many Thousands, were struck with solemn Silence, and their Countenances covered with a melancholy Gloom.”

Goya’s monumental work, “The 3rd of May 1808” has been compared with Paul Revere’s engraving. While the scale of the works is very different, the subject matter and the composition are very similar. The 82 prints in Goya’s series, Los desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), published 35 years after Goya’s death, argue that Goya was painting about the horrors of war, not trying to create propaganda. Paul Revere’s engraving poses more of a question, asking his fellow citizens to respond. “The prints were intended as propaganda. . . “( Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere, American Antiquarian Society online resource, 2020).

Say Their Names, compassion for the victims

Samuel Gray. Samuel Maverick. James Caldwell. Crispus Attucks. These men were victims of members of a British regiment on King Street in Boston on March 5, 1770. James Caldwell and Crispus Attucks had no family or home in Boston, and Samuel Adams organized a procession to transport their caskets to Faneuil Hall, where they lay in state for three days before their public funeral. The people of Boston held a funeral procession for all of the victims, and they were buried in Boston in the Granary Burying Ground.

Crispus Attucks was a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry. The significance of his death has been a matter of debate for the last 250 years, argued in three different intertwining threads:

  1. He was the leader of a mob. This was John Adams’s argument in a Courtroom in 1770 when he defended William Wemms and seven other British soldiers. Adams described Attucks as “a stout Molatto fellow, whose very looks, was enough to terrify an person” (Adams Papers, Digital Edition, volume 3, p. 269, Historical Society) . This was also the (unsuccessful) position of the Massachusetts Historical Society when they opposed a monument to Attucks on the Boston Common in 1887 (Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Second Series, Vol. 3, [Vol. 23 of continuous numbering] (1886 – 1887), pp. 313-318).
  2. He was an African American hero who should be acknowledged and memorialized. This was William C. Nell’s argument when he advocated for an annual celebration of Crispus Attucks Day on March 5 and wrote The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution in the 1850s.
  3. He was an American hero. John Boyle O’Reilly’s poem at the 1888 dedication of the memorial on the Boston Common (p.56) captures the idea that Crispus Attucks represented all Americans:

“And so must we come to the learning of Boston’s lesson to-day                                                                                                                                                                                           

The moral that Crispus Attucks taught in the old heroic way,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

God made mankind to be one in blood, as one in spirit and thought. . . “

Paul Revere, engraver, [Four coffins of men killed in the Boston Massacre] (1770), Revere Collection, American Antiquarian Society.
“Digital Commonwealth provides support for the creation, management, and dissemination of cultural heritage materials held by Massachusetts libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives.”

from the Digital Commonwealth Statement of Values, Adopted by the Board on October 19, 2021.

“The study of history can be an effective tool against racism and can support better understanding of the experience of Black people. However, archives are not neutral; they are created by people and reflect the power structures that those people are influenced by and participate in. We must choose what our non-neutrality means. In this moment, we specifically affirm that Black lives matter and that we support efforts to dismantle oppression and injustice.”

from Statement from Digital Commonwealth Board on Black Lives Matter, Adopted by the Board on June 16, 2020.

Barbara Schneider, Member Outreach and Education Committee