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The Library celebrates Juneteenth with the Dave Macklin Band as they pay tribute to the musical contributions of Black artists. PARK SOUNDS 2025 brings free outdoor musical performances featuring local artists to the front lawn of the Cambridge Public Library Main Branch. These events are all-ages. Bring a chair, food, and loved ones to celebrate the summer! Funding is provided by the CPL Foundation.

As you begin your holiday shopping or if you’re preparing in advance of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and/or Cyber Monday, the Cambridge Police Department wants to encourage residents and businesses to once again consider supporting the “Secret Santa for Seniors” gift drive. Now in its 18th year, the gift drive brings gifts and joy to seniors who may not have any remaining family members or loved ones nearby during the holiday season.

Serving on a board or commission can be a rewarding experience and an excellent way to contribute to the quality of life of the community in which you live or work. It is a City of Cambridge goal to expand and deepen community engagement with a focus on strengthening the diversity and inclusion of its various boards and commissions. Apply today to serve your community.

Music, movement and stories! Join local storyteller and community member ashley herring for 20 minutes of fun! For children of all ages and their grown-ups. ashley herring (she series) has enjoyed being in her imagination for countless years and promised she would never stop playing. With her ancestors, she dreamed up blackyard, a local grass roots organization, which lifts up and centers the love for Black children in Cambridge and surrounding greater area. ashley is excited to share songs and stories with you today.

Join the Cambridge Black History Project and the Cambridge Public Library in welcoming Warren Eugene Milteer Jr. for a reading and discussion of his new book, Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era. The recipient of the Southern Historical Association’s Charles S. Sydnor Award for the best book in Southern history in 2022, Milteer will be joined in conversation by Susan Tomlinson, an associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Registration is required.

Please join the Library in celebrating the 250th anniversary of the publication of Phillis Wheatley's poems with a poetry reading and workshop. Organized by the poet Artress Bethany White—the co-editor of Wheatley at 250: Black Women Poets Re-imagine the Verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters—this event will open with an African drumming prelude, followed by a presentation on Wheatley's life and work as well as a reading by contemporary poets inspired by Wheatley and collected in Wheatley at 250, and concluding with a short writing exercise designed to engage the audience with Wheatley's poems.

For four decades, Johnisha Matthews Levi believed a conventional story about her birth, picturing her happy parents at the hospital together. While sorting through her late mother's belongings, however, she discovered a document indicating that her father was instead serving time in Lorton Correctional Complex. This revelation, along with rumors about an FBI investigation of her deceased parents' "private business," leads Levi to unearth the hidden history of her family. She ties this story to public policy, demonstrating how state lottery legalization and the War on Drugs disrupted the Black institutions and communities in Washington, DC. Registration is required.

Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Theaster Gates—award-winning artist, professor at the University of Chicago, and Director of Artists Initiatives at the Lunder Institute for American Art at Colby College Museum of Art—and Henry Louis Gates Jr.—Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, and an Emmy, Du Pont, and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, and institution builder—for a discussion of their new book Another View: The Vibrant World of Contemporary Black Artists, co-edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., featuring Theaster Gates. Registration is required.

34 artists and organizations are being awarded $112,461 in Local Cultural Council Grant funding by Cambridge Arts and the City of Cambridge. Funded projects include a comics camp for foster children, a hip-hop dance class for seniors, a celebration of the history of Black American music, a poetry writing program pairing teens with older adults, an elementary school playwriting project addressing the indigenous history and ecosystem of the Charles River, performances of short plays by short plays by Asian Americans, a documentary about the late Cambridge artist Peter Valentine, and a documentary about The Middle East Restaurant and Nightclub.

This month's book: Black Dahlia by William J. Mann Audience: Adults who are true crime fans. How to get the print book: Copies of the print book are set aside at the Main Library. Visit the Main Library Q&A Desk at 449 Broadway during service hours and a staff member can help you check out a copy. How to get the e-book or digital audiobook: This month’s book is available as an e-book and digital audiobook through the Libby app. How to register: Click the registration link below to register. We'll meet in the Rossi Room on the first floor of the Main Library. For more information, contact Amie at alemire@cambridgema.gov.