Black Patriots of Cambridge
6:00 PM Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Location:
First Church in Cambridge, Congregational
11 Garden St. Cambridge, MA 02138
in Margaret Jewett Hall
Contact:
Sarah Burks, sburks@cambridgema.gov, 617-349-4687
Fighting for Freedom: Black Cambridge from the Revolution to the Early Nineteenth Century
Join us for an illustrated talk with Leslie Brunetta and Paula Paris and learn more about Cambridge's Black Patriots and the Black Cantabrigians that lived and worked here in the years following the Revolutionary War.
Wed. June 25, 2025, 6:00PM
First Church in Cambridge, Congregational
11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
in the Margaret Jewett Hall
Leslie Brunetta is a writer who has been a member of the Cambridge Black History Project since 2020. She stumbled into researching Cambridge Black history after discovering that Francis Prince Clary, activist and assistant to the first Harvard chemistry professor, had lived on her street in Mid Cambridge. She has published a number of profiles of historical Black figures in Cambridge Day and the Mount Auburn Cemetery website. She just published an essay at Commonplace about a well-known Black author’s formidable widow employed by William Dean Howells as a housekeeper on Sacramento St.
Paula Paris is a lifelong resident of West Cambridge. She is a member of First Church in Cambridge and is active in many community organizations including the Cambridge Historical Commission and the Cambridge Black History Project. She is Deputy Director of the educational non-profit JFY NetWorks, which prepares underserved youth for college and the workplace. Learn more about First Church's racial justice work online here.
This event is being sponsored by the Cambridge Historical Commission, Cambridge Black History Project and First Church in Cambridge and with the support of a grant to the City from the Massachusetts Office of Tourism. For more information, see MA250 website and Cambridge250.