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A Day in Quincy, MA for The Birthday of John Quincy Adams

At thirteen, I picked up David McCullough’s hefty volume on John Adams and the course of my life changed. A special fascination with early American and United States history was formed in my heart that would, eventually, inspire my decision to pursue History and Museum Studies at Tufts.

John Quincy Adams at 16. He was a boy genius who had already served the new American nation as secretary to the foreign minister to Russia.

As I read, it wasn’t the character of John Adams who most piqued my interest, but those of his four children, who, more keenly than anyone, felt the pains and dealt with the lifelong repercussions of their father’s frequent absences in the name of serving his country. The oldest son, John Quincy Adams — a brilliant, creative, moody, dutiful aspiring poet whose head was often in the clouds — became my special interest.

John Quincy Adams’s stone library. Photo taken on my first trip to Massachusetts when I was 18.

When I was eighteen, a longstanding dream came true when I visited the three historic homes at the Adams National Historical Park. I walked through the halls and across the grounds where young John Adams, then his children, then their children studied, worked, and played. I was enchanted by the beautiful stone library on the Old House property; an elderly John Quincy Adams made his son promise he would build the structure to protect his beloved collection of 8,000 books from fires. I listened to our guide’s exciting rendering of the story and took in the scent of all those carefully preserved old pages.

Then, on Monday, July 12th, 2021, I was able to live another dream. At the United First Parish Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, where both Adams presidents worshipped, I attended a wreath-laying ceremony for John Quincy Adams’s birthday. If such longevity was possible for human beings, the eleventh of July would have seen him turn 254.

Such speakers as the Mayor of Quincy, the President of the Quincy City Council, the Minister of the United First Parish Church, and of course representatives from the Adams National Historical Park and the Quincy Historical Society took the podium to speak of Adams’s courage,  and the strong principles that alienated him from political enemies and allies alike, for which in death he has earned substantial respect. They spoke of the courage we have had to employ as a community, as a nation, as human beings this past year. They spoke of the importance of John Quincy Adams’s example in such times as these.

After the ceremony, I went with a knowledgable, passionate church guide and a curious, kindly schoolteacher into the crypt beneath the United First Parish Church, where John Quincy Adams, his wife, and his parents are all buried. It was a bit of a heart-stopping moment for me. I’d longed to see this for much of my life.

JQA’s tomb with the presidential birthday wreath, at the United First Parish Church, a historic site in Quincy. 12 July 2021.

It was cold and stark, except for the American flags resting on the tombs of both men, and the beautiful presidential wreath adorning John Quincy’s for this special day. I placed my hands over his name and reflected.

Like all of us, he was a complex person. He is well-known now for his battle in the House of Representatives for the abolition of slavery in his twilight years, and his successful defense of the Amistad Africans before the Supreme Court at the age of 73. But it had taken him this long to ever speak up for the rights of Black individuals, in a nation he had served almost non-stop since before his fifteenth birthday, having held virtually every political office possible. I thought about the enslaved peoples in this nation as I stood beneath the church.

He came to care about the rights of Native peoples in the United States, but only after doing irreparable damage to the lives of many by approving of and fueling dispossession of lands in his earlier career. I thought about them as I stood beneath the church.

He was not a good father. Rather than break the cycle by recognizing the harsh ways his parents pushed him toward glory, he treated his own sons with even more cruelty. Two out of three of them died tragically, and young. I thought about them, and all the other Adamses who did not meet their family’s standard of greatness and, so, are not buried in this crypt (or remembered by history), as I stood beneath the church.

I walked afterward to Penn’s Hill, the spot in Quincy where John Quincy Adams, a month shy of his eighth birthday, walked with his mother on the night of June 17th, 1775, and watched Charlestown burn while the Battle of Bunker Hill raged. He was haunted for the rest of his long life by the flames and the sound of the guns. Every year, Boston held a celebration to commemorate the courage of the militiamen who fought at Bunker Hill; he never attended a single one.

The Abigail Adams Cairn at Penn’s Hill. 12 July 2021.

I lingered there. You can’t see Boston anymore; Penn’s Hill is surrounded by neighborhoods now, and the fifteen-minute walk there from the little farmhouse where Abigail Adams raised her children is lined with homes and businesses. I thought about courage and principle; I thought about those whom history celebrates and those whom it forgets; I thought about the seven-year-old who held his mother’s hand while he watched the world fall apart across the shoreline — unaware that, two and a half centuries later, people would be tromping through his childhood home, marveling at his stone library, placing their hands on his tomb to think about those he helped, those he ignored, those he hurt.

The farmhouse where John and Abigail Adams raised their brilliant son “Johnny,” his older sister “Nabby,” and his younger brothers “Charley” and “Tommy.” Today, it is a historic house museum.

I thought about the power of history, the power of museums, the power of place and story, to connect us to all those who have come before, so that we can learn from their examples and swear to do better.

The grounds at the Adams National Historical Park are open, and the museums are preparing for a phased reopening after the pandemic. Click here for more information. 

The United First Parish Church, also known as the “Church of the Presidents,” is open again for tours of the sanctuary and the Adams crypt. Click here for more information.

Weekly Job Roundup

This week’s exciting opportunities …

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Museums Celebrate Juneteenth

Over the weekend, many people across the nation celebrated Juneteenth — a day made all the more special this year because it was finally made a national holiday, the first new one declared since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 1983. This long overdue step in our country’s story is vital, yet it is also just the beginning: a reminder of all we have yet to accomplish in bringing freedom, justice, and equality to all. As beacons of history, social enlightenment and education, and change, museums are uniquely situated to tell the story of Juneteenth and its implications, and many have long been doing so.

June 19th, 2021: Houston dancer Prescylia Mae performs at the dedication ceremony for a new mural honoring emancipation, Galveston, Texas. via Galveston County Daily News

 
First, what is Juneteenth? This holiday, long celebrated by Black Americans, commemorates June 19th, 1865. On this day, the arrival of Union troops to Galveston, Texas informed the still-enslaved African Americans that they were free; the Emancipation Proclamation, signed all the way back in 1863, was at last the law of the land. Peace had come nearly two months prior, resulting in the South’s defeat; the treaty was signed, President Abraham Lincoln already dead. Yet news spread slowly, and enslavers resisted the change, meaning that these Texan African Americans still did not know they were free; Juneteenth remembers the day that the belated news finally reached them. Celebrations of this holiday spread rapidly through Black communities in the following years, and now, it has finally been acknowledged on a federal level.
 
So what can we expect from the museum field going forward, with Juneteenth finally being a part of the national consciousness? Here is just a brief list of examples of what we saw this year, and what we can expect from now on.
 

Members of the Pan African Rhythm Cooperative perform at the grand opening of the Harriet Tubman Museum, which doubled as a Juneteenth celebration.

This museum had its long-anticipated grand opening on June 19th, 2021, combining the ceremony with a Juneteenth celebration. The commemoration included performances by the Pan African Rhythm Cooperative, Civil War reenactments, communal prayer, and a discussion of the meaning of Juneteenth. Four hundred community members gathered to attend. 
 
 
NMAAHC honored Juneteenth with a whole series of virtual programs, which included insights from novelists, professors, eminent scholars, singer-songwriters, storytellers, and museum professionals. These online events, free and open to the public, grappled with the meaning of Juneteenth historically and in our modern climate, while also educating participants about African American cultural traditions, literature, activism, and even food. Watch those programs and learn more about the holiday on NMAAHC’s Juneteenth resource page here.
 
Over the weekend, the MFA commemorated Juneteenth with free admission to the museum and a series of outdoor events, including a concert organized by BAMS Fest (an organization dedicated to breaking down racial barriers in the arts), art-making inspired by and discussions in tribute to Basquiat, and a screening of the new documentary Summer of Soul, presented in partnership with the Roxbury International Film Festival. The MFA’s events illustrate the ability of museums of all types to fight for racial justice and celebrate the contributions of people of color in our nation.
 

Informational slides on Juneteenth. via blkfreedom.org

On June 15th, 2021, blkfreedom.org hosted a spectacular virtual event of education and celebration. Ten museums of African American history and culture participated, demonstrating the sheer power and impact of museums in cooperation with one another. The entire event can be viewed online here. The participating museums:
 
Amistad Research Center, New Orleans, LA
 
With these and other events across the country, American museums used Juneteenth as an opportunity to celebrate, honor, remember, and educate. Hopefully, we can expect such commemorations of our newest national holiday for years to come.

A Promise for All People: Reflecting on an Afternoon at Boston’s Old State House

I have been fascinated by the history of the early Americas and United States since middle school, and dreamed of one day moving to the Boston area — since American Revolution sites are pretty hard to come by in my hometown on the central coast of California. When I arrived last autumn to begin my studies at Tufts, one of the first places I headed for was the Old State House, and it is a museum visit that has stuck with me all these months later. As I sit in California, home for a visit before it’s back to New England, I thought I would use my first post as the new History editor to reflect on that first afternoon I spent making a pilgrimage to this powerful place.

The Old State House is an impressive building. Built all the way back in 1713, it has been restored and maintained beautifully. A two-story brick structure, it manages to still catch the eye, though it is surrounded now by a swarm of much taller modern buildings.

The Old State House, 12 September 2020.

That first day, I paused outside for a few minutes; I’ve done so every time I’ve returned. The infamous Boston Massacre (for so it was called by beloved propagandists like Paul Revere) occurred here, in the shadow of this building, on the snowy night of March 5th, 1770. An initially harmless scuffle — characterized by shouting and snowball-throwing — between Bostonians and British soldiers, many of whom were intimately acquainted because of the army’s longtime residence in the city, ended badly, and five patriots lost their lives. They are all buried together, in the Old Granary Burying Ground, a five-minute walk from the Old State House. This is another place I like to pause. Once I witnessed a father reading the victims’ names off the headstone to his little son and daughter — telling them the story of that chilly night. They listened unwaveringly.

The headstone for the Boston Massacre victims at the Old Granary Burying Ground, 12 September 2020.

One of the names this man read to his children was Crispus Attucks. As I walked through the Old State House that day, feeling the periodic rumble of the subway beneath me, it was this Crispus Attucks — not the Liberty Tree Flag, not John Hancock’s deep red coat, not the musket dug up at Bunker Hill — who most captured my attention.

Crispus Attucks was a sailor; he worked at sea and on the docks of the Atlantic coast; he was in Boston that night; he was, tradition tells us, the first to die. Beyond that, we don’t know much about him — except that he was part Black, part Native American. He was a man of two peoples, both of whom were severely oppressed, marginalized, and enslaved — in an era when white British colonists were crying for freedom from the “slavery” of the British crown but ignoring the rights of others. Attucks was the first to die for the cause of liberty though white patriots had no intention of offering him such a right.

On my visit to the Old State House that warm September afternoon, I climbed the stairs to the second story and was met with the special exhibit Reflecting Attucks, which examined the man’s memory, the legend he has become. Attucks is a civil rights icon and a symbol of freedom, equality, and courage, everything America should and could be. The information about the exhibit online says that Attucks’s legacy “reminds us that as long as the nation fails to realize the promise of the American Revolution for all of its people, we will always need another Attucks.”

Crispus Attucks by William H. Johnson, 1945. Via the online exhibit Reflecting Attucks.

It wasn’t what I had expected to be struck with at the Old State House in Boston. I thought I would leave thinking about John and Sam Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock; or the night that protesting patriots tore down the building’s famous lion and unicorn statues; or the day the Declaration of Independence was read aloud from its balcony. Instead, I was thinking about our world today — the current moment of reckoning in this country, the demands of so many that we do finally realize the promise of the American Revolution for all of its people.

Every time I have returned to or reflected upon the Old State House, I think about the power of museums to make us confront the past and motivate us to shape the future. Crispus Attucks’s name reverberates through the rooms of that brick building, the wooden floors that shake with the movement of the subway, the ground outside which once was stained with his blood — and beckons us to listen, to learn, and to change.

For information on the Old State House’s hours and admission, click here. To check out the online Reflecting Attucks exhibit, click here.

Weekly Job Roundup

Welcome to this week’s roundup of exciting opportunities!

The Des Moines Art Center (Des Moines, IA), where they are seeking an Associate Curator.

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