Political cartoons have long served to provoke public debate, illustrating opinions of the day for the masses. From early in the 19th century, arguments over voting rights—who votes and who counts the votes—have been depicted in cartoons, especially with the rise of illustrated newspapers and magazines with a national circulation before the Civil War. 

Featuring examples of published cartoons from the MHS collections as well as other libraries and foundations, this exhibition illustrates how cartoonists helped to tell the story of voting rights in the United States. In addition to many drawings by Thomas Nast, the most influential American political cartoonist in the decades following the Civil War, this exhibition features modern reinterpretations of these topics by editorial cartoonists, including Herblock (Herbert Block), Tom Toles, Bill Mauldin, and the work of current Boston-area artists.

Explore the online exhibition at www.masshist.org/whocounts.

Thomas Nast defined American political cartoons in the decades following the Civil War. His illustrations popularized icons such as the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and even the modern image of Santa Claus. This exhibition highlights Thomas Nast’s remarkable impact through a cartoon biography created by local artists.

Explore the online exhibition at www.masshist.org/thomasnast.

In 1841, a dozen or so African American male youth aged twelve to sixteen established the Young Men’s Literary Society in Boston with the stated aim to promote intellectual growth. The very success of this endeavor laid bare the severe educational inequalities and inequities that African American youth faced in Boston’s public schools. In response, these youth organized for change. This paper traces their organizing efforts and describes how their skills in composition, penmanship, elocution, and the literary arts set the stage for the “overthrow of caste schools” in Boston in 1855.

The African American History Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

POSTPONED: This event has been postponed (exact date TBD).

In partnership with the Tsongas Industrial History Center, we will explore the intersections of environmental history, science, and engineering. Chad Montrie, Professor at UMass Lowell, will provide an overview to the study of environmental history, particularly as it relates to New England industry. Teachers will examine primary sources and participate in hands-on activities with Tsongas Center staff drawn from their "Industrial Watershed and "River as Classroom" programs.

Note: This workshop will be taking place off-site at the Tsongas Industrial History Center in Lowell, MA.

This program is open to all who work with K-12 students. Teachers can earn 22.5 PDPs or 1 graduate credit (for an additional fee).

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

This paper brings a fresh perspective to the study of modern American environmental thought as well as modern American radicalism by exploring the significance of nature in the lives and writing of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, following a narrative arc from their formative years in different parts of the Italian countryside to their final years as dedicated revolutionaries confined to Massachusetts prisons.

The Environmental History Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

The New England Biography Series begins with a discussion of three recent biographies, published during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we know from the months of uncertainty we’ve all lived through so far, there are lessons about persistence, resistance and resilience to be learned from looking at the past. Tufts University professor Julie Dobrow, author of After Emily, will chair a panel featuring Nicholas Basbanes (Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), Kimberly Hamlin (Free Thinker: Sex, Suffrage, and the Extraordinary Life of Helen Hamilton Gardener) and John Loughery (Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century) to explore how their subjects prevailed in times of personal tragedy and public dissent, and how the authors learned to apply the lessons of their subjects to their own trials and travails as writers.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

Massachusetts has a famously literary culture. At the birth of the house museum movement in the late 19th century, authors’ houses were among the first to be preserved. In this next installment of this series, we will explore three outstanding authors’ houses: The Emily Dickenson Museum, which is comprised of the Homestead and the Evergreens; The Whittier Birthplace; and Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House. We will unpack how these three remarkable sites grapple with the challenges of audience engagement, preservation and interpretation.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

6:00pm Sponsor Cocktail Corner
6:30pm Virtual Program

featuring JON MEACHAM
in conversation with
EMILY ROONEY 

Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian, contributing writer to The New York Times Book Review, and contributing editor at TIME. His #1 New York Times bestseller, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, looks at tumultuous periods in American history when presidents and ordinary citizens came together to rebuild a civic trust.

Emily is the creator and former host of Greater Boston. Since 1997, Emily has brought her journalistic credentials and deep knowledge of media, politics and culture to the WGBH audience and has earned numerous awards, including the National Press Club's prestigious Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism, a series of New England Emmy Awards, and Associated Press recognition for Best News/Talk Show. Before coming to WGBH, Emily was director of political coverage and special events at Fox Network in New York from 1994 to 1997. Prior to that, she was executive producer of ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Emily also worked at WCVB-­TV in Boston from 1979 to 1993, where she served as news director for three years and as assistant news director before that.

Tickets and Sponsorships


Honorary Chairs:
Governor Charlie Baker and First Lady Lauren Baker
Edward C. and Elizabeth B. Johnson
Henry Lee
CJ and Neil Musante
Mayor Martin J. Walsh

Embrace your inner nerd and join us at our first annual Young Patron Party!

Hosted by Tori Bedford, reporter at GBH News and producer of the All Rev'd Up podcast, this virtual event will feature a variety of entertaining activities. Join Bully Boy Distillers and Edgar B. Herwick III, host of the Curiosity Desk at GBH News, for lively cocktail-making demonstrations and engage in conversations with peer young patrons. The inaugural Rising History Maker Award will be presented to Dr. Karilyn Crockett, the City of Boston's first Chief of Equity.

Purchase pay-your-age tickets to receive advance cocktail recipes and automatic entry into door prize drawings. 

Historian Michelle Marchetti Coughlin explores the life of Plymouth Colony First Lady Penelope Pelham Winslow, a woman of influence during the eventful years of Plymouth's existence, through wartime and the end of its independence. Tracking fragmentary records and traces of Penelope Winslow's material world, Coughlin illuminates the story of a long-forgotten historical figure and offers fresh insight into the experiences of women in early New England.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

This project combines digital history methods with theories from critical archive studies to explore the intersection of data, power, documentation and violence in antebellum Virginia. It explores these issues through a history of the First African Baptist Church (FABC) in Richmond, Virginia, which, in the years before the American Civil War, was a religious space open to both free and enslaved people of color, and simultaneously a site of surveillance and violence. This project combines quantitative analysis, interactive visualization and traditional historical narrative in order to tell the history of the FABC in new ways.

The Digital History Projects Seminar at the MHS invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

Most of our 351 towns have a community-based historical organization. Many are volunteer-run. Collectively, they present and preserve the stuff and stories that make up our history - usually with an emphasis on local art, industries, and material culture. William Hosley has criss-crossed Massachusetts visiting them in every corner of the state, from Adams to Andover, Northampton to Nantucket. We will hear from three of what he calls gems - house museums and historicals with amazing stuff and stories, that fly a bit under the radar. Join us for a program featuring the Framingham History Center, Dedham Historical Society, and the Hatfield Historical Society. 

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. Prof. Jennifer Van Horn investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to gravestones, dressing furniture, and prosthetic devices—to explore how elite American consumers assembled objects to form a new civil society on the margins of the British Empire. In this interdisciplinary transatlantic study, artifacts emerge as key players in the formation of Anglo-American communities and eventually of American citizenship. This presentation is the second annual lecture in honor of President Emeritus Dennis Fiori in recognition of his leadership. This lecture is made possible by gifts from friends of the Society.

Please note, this is an online event held on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.