BOSTON (WHDH) – It’s the fall of 1974 in South Boston, and four generations of the Moran family are rushing to church for baby Lila’s baptism. The moment is filled with great anticipation, and one of the most memorable images frozen in time in Constantine Manos’s “Where’s Boston” series.
Now, more than 50 years later, that photograph has taken on a new meaning.
The Boston Athenaeum has revived the landmark exhibition first shown during Boston’s Bicentennial celebration in 1976. To mark America’s 250th anniversary, the library has paired Manos’s photographs with 12 newly recorded oral histories, giving the people captured in the images a chance to tell the stories behind them.
“These images show one moment in time, but when you talk to someone and ask them to reflect on it, you learn so much more about them and their larger family history,” said Boston Athenaeum curator Lauren Graves. “Then somehow that history, too, ends up relating to a larger Boston history.”
In their oral history, George and Carolyn Moran reflected on the social upheaval surrounding Boston’s bussing crisis, when court-ordered school integration sparked intense racial conflict across the city.
While the baptism photograph captures a day of celebration, the Moran family said it also stirs memories of another pivotal moment: their decision to leave the South Boston neighborhood they had long called home.
“Around the corner came a huge swarm of people being chased by police on horseback with clubs,” George Moran said. “Apparently earlier that day there had been a stabbing around the corner of South Boston High School, and the town was in total turmoil over that incident.”
Fearing for their children’s safety as tensions escalated, the two Boston Public Schools teachers made the difficult decision to move their family to Brookline.
“We were very careful in making our decision because we did have a strong allegiance to the schools and to education,” Carolyn Moran said. “I would say our concerns about the education of our daughters was our primary reason for making the move.”
Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
Many of Manos’s seemingly innocuous photographs reveal the city’s deeply segregated spaces that shaped Boston a half-century ago. An Italian religious process in the North End, young Black men unwinding at Franklin park, and a father looking lovingly at his son at a Chassidic center in Brookline each offer a glimpse into communities that rarely intersected.
But even amid turmoil and division, Manos found beauty in life’s small moments—a bride leaving a church on her wedding day, a young man absorbed in a game of chess, and a father flying a kite with his son.
Courtesy Boston Athenaeum
“The exhibit shows some of the terrible times of protest, but it also shows the moments of joy,” Carolyn Moran said. “They’re all juxtaposed, and that’s life—these difficult times as well as beautiful times.”
As the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, curators hope the exhibition encourages visitors to reflect on not just how far the city has come, but also the work that still needs to be done in the coming decades.
“We thought this was a unique moment to look back at the Bicentennial, to look back 50 years and think about this recent past,” Graves said. “What do we want for Boston today? What do we want for the future? And what do we want for the future of the country itself?”
Visitors are also invited to become part of the exhibition by filling out comment cards reflecting on where Boston is today.
The Boston Athenaeum says it is still identifying people featured in Manos’s photographs and plans to continue expanding the exhibition’s online oral history collection.
“Where’s Boston” is open until December 12.
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