On Wednesday, February 25 at 7pm, Historic Newton and the Newton Free Library present the next installment in the Newton History Series: The Troubled History of Race and Public Education in Massachusetts, taking place in person at the Library.

Many of us learn about school desegregation in the context of the mid-twentieth-century South: Brown v. Board of Education, Ruby Bridges, and the Little Rock Nine. Yet a century before that, young Black women in Massachusetts led the fight for equal school rights—the right of all to a quality education on an equal basis.

Presented by award-winning historian Kabria Baumgartner, this lecture examines the lives of young Black women whose activism reshaped public education in the Bay State. Exploring this history is vital, not only to spotlight the long struggle for Black educational justice, but also to remind us of our collective obligation to democratize public schools today.