Events

If you’d like to suggest an idea for an event or speaker, please visit our guidelines page for more information. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Life and Legacy of Belle Da Costa Greene with Erica Ciallela
Monday, March 9, 6:30 p.m.
Community Room in West Roxbury Library

We’re excited to welcome historian and researched Erica Ciallela, a former Belle da Costa Greene Fellow and co-curator at the Morgan Library & Museum. She is known for her pivotal role in the exhibition, “Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy,” focusing on the groundbreaking first director of the Morgan Library, who was an African American woman forced to pass as white to secure her role and career.

Ciallela uses archives to uncover multiple narratives, especially concerning African American women, and has spoken extensively about Greene’s influence as a trailblazer for collection access. 

George S. Boutwell: 19th Century Massachusetts Statesman and Politician
Monday, March 16, 6:30 p.m.
Community Room in West Roxbury Library

Join us to hear historian and writer Jeffrey Boutwell speak about George Boutwell, the 19th century Massachusetts statesman and politician who served his state and his country for seven decades and was deeply involved in the abolitionist movement and the formation of the Republican party.

Boutwell was the Commonwealth’s youngest-ever governor in the 1850s and helped create the Republican Party in the 1850s, becoming a close ally and friend of presidents Lincoln and Grant during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.While in Congress, he helped write the 14^th and 15^th amendments to the Constitution and led the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson for seeking to re-establish white supremacist political control in the South.

Reconnecting with Phillis Wheatley Peters: Her World and Writing Workshop
April 4 @ 2-4 p.m.
West Roxbury Library Community Room

Please join Northeastern Professor of English and Africana Studies, Nicole N. Aljoe, and Toni Bee, Poet Populi of Cambridge and Grub Street Writers Fellow, for a talk and poetry writing session focused on the works and world of Phillis Wheatley Peters as a lens for reconsidering the meanings of liberty and its relationships to notions of voice and power as we celebrate the nations’ 250th anniversary. In addition to sharing new evidence about Phillis’s life and history, the workshop will conclude with an opportunity to use Wheatley Peters as the inspiration to create our own poems.