Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
Boston, MA
Boston Urban Archive started as a hobby but turned into a way to unearth history – The Boston Globe
When I travel and visit people in other cities and states, I’ve realized that many people still don’t grasp the diversity that exists within Boston. Sometimes, I hear questions like “There are Black people in Boston?”
I actually grew up outside of Boston itself, but I would come into the city on weekends and during the summer to see my dad, who was based in Dorchester. He is from Barbados originally — and Dorchester is home to all of these Caribbean communities, which was so exciting and a culture shock to be introduced to when I visited. I loved coming here. I moved to Boston full-time when I was 12 years old and eventually enrolled as an English major with a focus on journalism at UMass Boston.
One semester, I took a music history class on hip-hop with UMass Boston professors Jeffrey Melnick and Akrobatik, who is also a well-known rapper from Boston. They brought in lots of cool artists and speakers. They also told us about this archive that existed in the campus library: the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive. So, I made an appointment, walked in, and there were all of these boxes and folders all around the main table. I just went to town in there for an hour and a half.
When you learn about the history of a city, you start to realize that a lot of stories eventually come full circle. They echo across generations. And as I dug through the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive, I was reminded that stories of Boston as this multicultural place are often untold. I couldn’t find a place online where you could even access that community history. As I kept finding all of these photos and videos — not just in the hip-hop archive but also in the Boston Public Library and Northeastern University Library, state archival databases, and television archives — I decided to create that resource online: the Boston Urban Archive.
When I launched the Boston Urban Archive’s account on Instagram in 2023, I was strategic with my approach. I wanted it to be a space that was aesthetically pleasing — very neat and organized. And I wanted to captivate people.
One of my earliest posts — which ended up getting something like a million hits — was this old video from the 1980s that featured Mark Wahlberg [a Boston-born actor and rapper] as a child. That video was a way of bringing people in and gaining traction before sharing a wider range of photos, videos, and stories from the archives. I also try to choose stories that have some connection to what is going on in the present. Recently, I posted this mid-1970s clip from a supermarket in Dorchester in which a reporter talks about rising food costs and customers are complaining about $2 steaks.
On Oct. 25, I wanted to publish something about youth in Boston. I had a video clip from 1990 of a reporter speaking with little boys at the Franklin Field housing project on the north side of Franklin Park. The reporter asks them about crime and a curfew that the city had been considering putting into place back then. I really liked the boys’ energy. They said, “Yeah, this is our neighborhood and if there’s a curfew, we’re probably not gonna abide by it, but we’re gonna be playing basketball and minding our own business.” When I heard that, I chuckled a little bit, and I decided to use that bit as the intro to another clip that showed the boys playing basketball. Within hours of posting the video on the Instagram account, all of these comments came rolling in, many of them saying the same thing: “RIP EMOE.” There were dozens of them.
So I’m like, “Who’s EMOE?” None of the video descriptions from the archive had information identifying the boys, because they were minors. But then another person commented on the post claiming to be EMoe’s cousin. So I messaged them, and I soon learned that EMoe was the nickname of the boy in the video who made the comment about staying out past curfew playing basketball. His name was Eric Paulding. And in 1997, Paulding was shot while leaving his girlfriend’s house around Franklin Park. I learned that his killing was notable because it came after a two-and-a-half-year period of no juveniles being killed in Boston. He was killed in the same neighborhood where that clip with the reporter took place seven years earlier.
Not long after Paulding’s cousin and I exchanged DMs, his aunt messaged me and said, “Thank you so much for sharing this. It was great for his grandmother to see.” That really hit a soft spot for me. The video clip was over 30 years old. When I imagined Paulding’s grandmother hearing his voice, seeing him, all these years later — I can only imagine how it made her feel.
In the beginning, I had some idea that sharing these archival videos and photos might inspire people from the community to contribute their own memories and information. But I didn’t realize how big this platform would become and that it could be a way of bringing a community together or how it would be this place where we all learn from each other. I’ve learned a lot from the comments. I posted a video of an early 1990s rap group called Joint Ventures, thinking, “Wow, this sounds like something that could’ve come out of New York.” And then the daughter of the group’s lead rapper, MC Fly Ty, commented and said, “That’s my dad! He ended up passing in ’94. Thanks for posting this.” I’ve even seen some folks reconnect with each other in the comments on certain posts! They’ll spot a familiar face, tag their friends, and say, “Oh my gosh, isn’t that Miss So-and-so from when we were kids?”
The Boston Urban Archive began as a hobby, but now it’s opened doors. People watch these videos, study these photos, and ask about the people in them: “Where are they now? What happened to them?”
As a journalist and a writer, I want to be able to answer those questions, to give voice to stories and experiences from the community that haven’t received the recognition that I think they should.
Ebony Gill is the creator of the Boston Urban Archive, which curates archived film, newspapers, documents, and photography from Boston, with a focus on underrepresented communities in the city. Miles Howard is a freelance writer in Boston and the founder of the Walking City Trail. He publishes the weekly hiking newsletter Mind the Moss.
Continue Reading
Books
Mass General nurse-turned-author Karen Winn brings Beacon Hill to life in her latest book. Add this to your beach bag.
Massachusetts General Hospital nurse-turned-author Karen Winn often writes in the Boston Athenaeum, watching tours pass by.
One day, in 2023, she joined one. And the seed for her next novel was planted.
“We passed by an oil portrait of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a major benefactor to the Athenaeum in the 1800s. The docent alluded to this dark history as to how he’d amassed a large portion of his fortune in the opium trade,” she tells me.
“The tour group moved on — but I was stuck there thinking. I went home and fell down this rabbit-hole of research and learned, to my surprise, just how many of the Boston Brahman families made their fortune in the opium trade. It was fascinating.”
I went down a similar rabbit-hole. The Boston Brahmin opium fortunes are well-documented, including a past Harvard Art Museum exhibit, articles, books and website info including, speaking of Perkins, the Perkins School for the Blind.
Winn, who lives on Beacon Hill and was in a secret society (I asked) added bits and pieces from her own life into the novel-creating mixing bowl: What if there was a secret society built on old opium money in Beacon Hill, and a Mass General nurse was somehow involved?
“The Society” was born.
If you’re looking for a Boston-set page-turner — an “alternate universe Beacon Hill,” as Winn puts it — to kick off your summer reading, add this suspense to your beach bag.
Nutshell: The Knox, standing proudly on Mount Vernon Street in Beacon Hill, houses meetings of a secret society. Some in Boston believe it’s an elite social club — others believe it hides something sinister.
When Boston antique dealer Vivian Lawrence sees her family fortune vanish, she turns to a family legend that ties her to the Knox, seeking a way into the exclusive secret society.
Taylor Adams, a 20-something Mass General ER nurse who recently moved to Boston, becomes almost obsessed with old-moneyed Vivian, “a creature of wealth,” after Vivian lands in the ER one night. When Vivian disappears from Mass General without a trace, Taylor’s search for answers pulls her into the Knox and its dark history…
What interested me — before I knew anything of Winn’s backstory— was that it felt like it was written by someone who just moved to Boston and was in awe of the city.
Living here, we might think of Rachel Dratch and Jimmy Fallon and Denise and Sully in those old “Boston Teen” SNL sketches, or Casey Affleck as the “King of Dunkin” as summing us up, at least in terms of how outsiders see us.
But Taylor, the Mass General nurse, almost fetishizes Boston, and old-moneyed New Englanders she imagines walking down every street.
Example: when old-Boston-money Vivian lands in the ER: Taylor “swallows, a flurry of excitement building in her chest… she envisioned that the city would be teeming with these ladies… That she would get to move among their world, learn from them, drink in their fanciness… letting that old New England generational wealth rub off on her until she glimmered with something of its gold dust…It is Boston, after all: the city of cobblestones and beauty, of Harvard and MIT, of sophistication and history.”
Winn, who grew up in New Jersey, moved to Boston 20 years ago after meeting her Boston-native husband Gil at UPenn. They now live in the Beacon Hill area with their two kids and 100-pound (yup) Bernedoodle.
After two decades here, she’s still “in awe.”
“I grew up in a 5,000-person town in New Jersey. When I came to Boston, I was struck by this beautiful city. Beacon Hill is one of the most historic and charming neighborhoods,” she tells me. “Living here, one might almost be inured to it, but I have this awe. I’m always struck by the cobblestone streets and the gaslit lamps.”
Winn even started a TikTok account for @theknoxsociety, documenting life on Beacon Hill.
This is Winn’s second novel, after 2022’s “Our Little World.” But “I’m not an overnight success by any shape or form,” she says with a laugh.
“I was a nurse and a nurse practitioner, but always loved writing and wrote on the side,” says Winn, who left Mass General in 2010. “It’s a typical writer’s story: I had hundreds of rejections for short stories.”
One of those rejections — from JFK Jr.’s “George Magazine” in 2000 — actually landed her in Newsweek recently.
I called Winn to talk opium, strange graveyard tour, a terrifying house fire, TikTok, and more.
Taylor arrives in Boston with a burning curiosity about the city. “What is Boston? Who are these people?” questions swimming in her head.
“Absolutely. When I came to Boston, I was so struck by this beautiful city. In my head, I could very clearly see the Knox building: The front is on Mount Vernon Street, and the back, I imagined to look like Branch Street. Branch isn’t the back of Mount Vernon, so I gave it a fictional name.”
I love that level of detail, though. No one outside Boston — or maybe even Beacon Hill— would ever know: oh, Branch Street isn’t in back of Mount Vernon. You have other specific references, like dining at 1928.
“I almost wish I’d been a little craftier [with adding more]. For instance, at one point I had Taylor get her knives sharpened at Blackstone’s. And it was just too much detail, so I pared it down. But sometimes I’m like, ‘Oh, I wish I kept that!’ [laughs]”
[laughs] That’s how it goes.
I don’t think I realized the effect each reference would have. There are book clubs now that tour Beacon Hill and go to spots mentioned. A few toured the Boston Atheneum, or dined at 1928. I didn’t realize how much people would connect to the sense of place. It feels like it’s been embraced by people in Boston, which is so fun.
Now 1928 has a cocktail named for your book. What are more specific inspirations that went into the novel?
“For the Knox, I took inspiration from The Somerset Club and The ‘Quin — the beautiful room with fireplaces and ornate details.
“And I was in a secret society in college: Tabard Society at UPenn.”
Wow, what was that like?
“I can’t tell you. [laughs]”
[laughs] Fair enough.
“But I loved that experience. When I was rushing [or trying to get in] you’d find out if you were invited by getting handwritten notes slipped under your door. I tapped into that with The Knox sending notes.”
You said your husband went with you on midnight strolls through Boston?
“Yes! I dragged him to some graveyard tours. We did one that —it was funny, because I’m not sure how I found it, but it definitely, like, wasn’t very legit.”
[laughs] OK.
“It was just us and this guy — we weren’t allowed inside any of the cemeteries. We’d watch the tours go on the inside, and the three of us would be standing on the outside. [laughs]”
[laughs] Amazing.
“My husband’s like, ‘Where did you find this guy?’ I don’t know.”
[laughs] This feels like a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode.
“It was quite an experience [laughs] And then, of course, I had to go back. We had to go back and do an official tour.
“And I toured the Nichols House Museum in Beacon Hill, which was neat to see another historic building and learn about family that lived there. I toured the Forbes House Museum in Milton. Forbes family was one of the Brahman families, they made their fortune in the opium trade.
“Also we had lived, at one point in the South End, and actually had a house fire. We were home at the time. Luckily, we were fine. But our house was a total loss.”
Oh my god.
“We each grabbed a kid and ran out at the door. It was pretty traumatic. Five minutes later, we would not have been able to go out that door. So, I tapped into that when I wrote the fire scene.”
Wow. That’s terrifying.
“As a writer, you store all these things up, and then go into your basket of experiences, and you get to use them.”
You also created a TikTok for the Knox. What sparked that, and how long will you keep that going?
“I’m having fun with it. I had no expectations when I started. I wasn’t big on TikTok. But having the account for the Knox itself allowed more creative freedom because I wasn’t putting myself out there — I was putting the Knox out there. So I’ve enjoyed creating these videos. Especially since the next novel is brewing in my head.”
What are you working on now?
“My next book focuses on a minor character mentioned in “The Society” — the bookstore owner, Nicholas. I was telling you earlier about those rejections — I actually wrote a short story about him years ago that was never published. It’s been living on my computer and in my head for all these years. I’m ready to tell the story. It will be another very Boston book.”
Catch Karen Winn on July 29 at Quincy’s Next Chapter Books & More.
Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
Boston, MA
Carjacking suspect killed by Boston officer had lengthy record with more than 17 criminal cases, court filings show – The Boston Globe
O’Malley shot and killed a suspect in a carjacking in March. The swift decision to prosecute has prompted outrage by the police union and law enforcement officials.
O’Malley, 33, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter for the death of Stephenson King, 39, who was shot March 11 while he allegedly tried to flee a traffic stop in a stolen car. Prosecutors determined that O’Malley had no justification for shooting at a moving vehicle.
“It is disappointing that the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office is choosing to second-guess an officer whose only goal was to protect the public,” O’Malley’s lawyer, David Yannetti, said in an email to the Globe. “We will continue to vigorously defend this officer and this case.”
“The main issue in this case will be who the aggressor really was and whether Officer O’Malley acted in lawful defense,” Yannetti wrote in court filings.
On Wednesday, Yannetti filed several defense motions in the Roxbury division of Boston Municipal Court, in an effort to illustrate “King’s mayhem and reign of terror,” spanning nearly two decades and resulting in more than 17 criminal cases across Massachusetts, court records show.
Over the years, King has been charged with strangulation, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, carjacking, breaking and entering, gun charges, and resisting arrest, according to court filings.
At the time of his death, King was free on bail for at least three separate felony cases, and had active warrants for his arrest, court records said.
O’Malley is seeking King’s mental health, criminal, and court records from all of his past cases, recordings from police body-worn and dash cameras, the medical examiner’s file on King, along with statements taken from O’Malley and witnesses at the scene of the shooting.
O’Malley told investigators that when he shot King he feared for his own life and for the life of another office on the scene, believing his colleague was about to be run over.
Police had pursued King after he allegedly committed a carjacking outside a pizza restaurant in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. About 15 minutes later, officers stopped the stolen car less than a mile away, at Linwood Square in Roxbury.
The driver ignored “multiple verbal commands” as officers approached and tried to drive away, police said.
King opened the car window, but did not turn the vehicle off. O’Malley drew his Taser and shouted, “Bro, I’m going to [expletive] shoot you,” the police report said.
That’s when King backed into the cruiser behind him, then maneuvered the vehicle forward and back “in an attempt to escape the police,” according to the report.
As King started to drive forward again, O’Malley fired three shots through the driver’s window, striking King, the report said.
King’s family has contended that he was experiencing a mental health crisis in the hours leading up to the deadly encounter.
In court filings, O’Malley’s lawyer, Yannetti, said King gave “O’Malley no choice that night.”
“Any suggestion that this shooting was precipitated by simply a ‘mental health crisis’ completely misses the point,” Yannetti wrote. “When facing an extremely dangerous threat, there is no time for a police officer to hold a counseling session on the street or to sit down to discuss the feelings of a menace who is intent on using a motor vehicle as a deadly weapon.”
“If a man is going to assault and carjack an innocent woman then threaten the lives and safety of the public and a police officer, that man needs to be stopped — whether he is in his right mind or not,” according to O’Malley’s motion.
O”Malley’s next court date, a probable-cause hearing, is scheduled for May 21.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.
-
New Jersey3 minutes agoBest burgers in New Jersey? 15 spots for classic and inventive burgers
-
New Mexico9 minutes agoFind out how New Mexico hospitals rank for patient safety
-
North Carolina15 minutes agoNorth Carolina couple accused of causing vulture invasion sued by furious town: ‘Not good neighbors’
-
North Dakota21 minutes agoDust storms rage in North Dakota and South Dakota
-
Ohio27 minutes agoManufacturing history unfolds at North Central Ohio Industrial Museum
-
Oklahoma33 minutes agoOklahoma becomes latest state to sue Roblox over child safety concerns
-
Oregon39 minutes agoOregon man shot at In-N-Out drive-thru drove family to safety with bullet lodged in head
-
Pennsylvania45 minutes agoAn Outpouring of Frustration Over Pennsylvania’s Rapid Data Center Growth – Inside Climate News