Digital Commons Network^™

“Each Heart Alone Knoweth Its Own Bitterness”: The Jackson Family In Clarke County, Virginia, From Enslavement To Jim Crow, Melanie E. Garvey

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the experiences of three generations of the Jackson family in Clarke County, Virginia, from approximately 1860 to 1915, covering the shift from enslavement to the Jim Crow period. Chapter One introduces the challenges with pre-existing publications on Clarke County and Virginia history. Chapter two focuses on the antebellum period and discusses what enslavement may have looked like in Clarke County. Chapter Three narrows the focus to Charles Jackson, Sr., the family patriarch, who was enslaved at New Market Plantation. Chapter Four looks at Charles Sr.’s son, Charles Jr., and the life he created for himself after enslavement. …

Northeastern Pennsylvania's Forgotten Labor Massacre: Analysis Pf The English Language Record Of The Lattimer Massacre, Jamie C. Costello

Graduate Masters Theses

The Lattimer Massacre occurred on September 10, 1897, in a small anthracite mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania. The bloody conflict erupted when an unarmed group of mostly Eastern European immigrant mine workers lethally clashed with militantly armed sheriff’s deputies who acted on behalf of private coal companies. Nineteen strikers died at the scene and dozens more were horrifically wounded. Despite the outraged shock of the community clamoring for justice which led to a murder trial that made international headlines, the Lattimer Massacre faded from local and national memory in the following decades. A combination of lingering nativist prejudice curated by …

Visual Report Of Cop26, Stéphanie Heckman

New England Journal of Public Policy

As a visual practitioner my job is to draw people’s thoughts, and in so doing, help people make sense of them. The visual summaries I create live during conferences aim to capture more than just the dry content, but also the dynamic, the mood and the unspoken. It is a tool more aligned with how our associative, sensory-fed brains work, for coping with the deluge of information that faces us these days. And it’s a tool that can help overcome language, learning and other barriers to access.

When I discovered in January 2020 that the next Conference of the Parties, …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The articles in this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy reflect aspects of the changing world order as it continues to adjust to the digital age.

Managing The Atmosphere: Intelligence And Assessment In The Early Years Of The Northern Ireland Peace Process—An Interview With Sir John Chilcot, Graham Spencer

New England Journal of Public Policy

Though the Northern Ireland peace process was shaped by the involvement of many actors and participants, it is also evident that certain figures were central to its development. One such figure was Sir John Chilcot, who, based in the Northern Ireland Office in the formative years of the peace process, provided a point of focus for communicating with and managing a range of individuals and groups with the overriding objective of ending conflict in Northern Ireland. This article is based on an extended interview with Chilcot about the challenges he faced in assessing intelligence across a range of sources and …

Cultural Work In Peacebuilding Among Traumatized Communities Of Northern Ireland 1: Background And General Considerations, Eugen Koh

New England Journal of Public Policy

Peace in Northern Ireland today remains fragile despite the exhaustive peacebuilding efforts that have taken place since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Many aspects of the sectarian conflict have been embedded in cultural substrata of the respective communities, and cultural transformation is necessary to achieve comprehensive and sustained peace. The basic assumptions about the Other in this sectarian conflict have their origin in traumatic events that occurred more than three hundred years ago and have been reinforced by the more recent three decades of conflict known as the Troubles. These traumatic individual and collective experiences across the generations have …

Cultural Work In Peacebuilding Among Traumatized Communities Of Northern Ireland 2: Talking About Culture, Eugen Koh

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article is the second of two that describe a psychodynamically informed understanding of the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland and an approach to cultural transformation called “cultural work” aimed at building peace among the state’s traumatized communities. The conflict between Protestant and Catholic communities has extended well into the cultural domain and is often weaponized to attack the Other. Conversations about culture quickly become stuck in a quagmire of identity politics. This article describes a psychodynamic trauma–informed approach to cultural conversations involving an in-depth analysis of culture that avoids becoming stuck. It outlines a framework and set of preconditions …

On The Rise: Asian American Women Elected To The Massachusetts House Of Representatives, Katie Mai, Center For Women In Politics And Public Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston, Institute For Asian American Studies, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Comprised of 160 State Representatives and 40 State Senators, the bicameral Massachusetts Legislature serves all residents and communities of the Commonwealth yet there has been limited racial, ethnic, and gender diversity reflected in the membership of the legislature for most of its existence. While Massachusetts has a substantial and rapidly growing Asian American population, there has historically been very limited representation by Asian American women in the Massachusetts Legislature, as documented by the Asian American Commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts1, yet 2011 represented a turning point. This brief focuses on the narratives of five Asian American women who have …

The Boston Opportunity Agenda: A Historic Case Study Of Public-Private Partnership In Education (2007-2019), Timothy M. Lavin

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

This historic case study studied the development of the Boston Opportunity Agenda (BOA), a public-private educational partnership, from 2007-2019. Despite significant prominence, influence, and investment from the partners involved, public-private educational partnerships in Boston have been understudied. The intention of this dissertation was to bring an understanding of how this urban educational public-private partnership developed; the motivations of the partners to participate; the partner perceptions of the successes and challenges of the partnership; and the extent of the partnership's influence on the Boston Public Schools.

This case study utilized qualitative methods of document analysis and semi-structured interviews of partnership leaders …

Conflict, Complexity, And Cooperation, John, Lord Alderdice

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the thesis that we are at a time of historical inflection and suggests what next steps might look like. The change in the seat of authority from the sixteenth century on with the replacement of political and religious hierarchies by participatory democracy and Enlightenment philosophies based on rationalism has seen a remarkable period of progress in science, technology, education, medicine, governance, trade, economics, and the rule of law. The twenty-first century, however, has ushered in a series of reversals for liberal democracy, the fraying of the international rules-based order that emerged after the two world wars and …

The Troubled Backstory Of The Twenty-Fifth Amendment: The Photo, The Feud, And The Secret Service, Garrison Nelson, Brenna M. Rosen

New England Journal of Public Policy

The 1963 murder of President John F. Kennedy led to a reconsideration of the 1947 Presidential Succession Act, which mandated that the Speaker of the US House of Representatives was next in line to the vice president and the Senate president pro tempore was next in line to the Speaker. The new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, was only fifty-five when he took the oath of office on November 22, 1963, but he had a well-known heart condition that would end his life nine years later. Seated behind Johnson when he met with Congress was the soon-to-be seventy-two-year old House Speaker …

Social Movements And Charitable Dress: An Examination Of 19th Century Adornment At The Industrial School For Girls In Dorchester, Massachusetts, Madelaine A. Penney

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis is an examination of the 19th century adornment assemblage recovered from the archaeological excavation of two features (1859-1884) at the Industrial School for Girls in Dorchester located at 232 Centre Street in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The school was administered by middle class Bostonian women that wished to train working class girls from broken, abusive, or unfit homes in professionalized domestic work. This thesis is a rare examination of a site that is single-gendered, and predominantly single-classed and aged with a large collection of documented activity. This investigation was conducted in order to question the values that the administration of …

The Right To Self-Determination: Philosophical And Legal Perspectives, Michael Freeman

New England Journal of Public Policy

Why do we need to rethink self-determination? In this article I argue that self-determination is a necessary feature of the human condition and a human right but that it is in part illusory and is potentially dangerous. We need to rethink self-determination because our collective thinking has been very confused, and bad thinking about self-determination costs many lives.

Cultures And Comfort: A Study Of Personal Adornment At Avery's Rest, Julianne Danna

Graduate Masters Theses

Avery’s Rest was a diverse, thriving plantation in Sussex County, Delaware in the late 1600s and early 1700s. John Avery, a flavorful character from England by way of Massachusetts and Maryland, settled the plantation in the late 1600s and made his final home there with his wife and children. After his death, the same site was then occupied by his daughter, Jemima, and her husband.

Excavated by the Archaeological Society of Delaware, the numerous artifacts from the archaeological site provide a glimpse into the lives of settlers on the colonial frontier as they fought to survive environmental challenges, negotiated continuous …

Behind The Numbers: Conditions Of Schooling In Boston (1981), Marcy Murninghan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article includes portions of a report on the structure, governance, operations, and effectiveness of the Boston School Committee that was commissioned by the Boston Municipal Research Bureau in 1980. The passages provide an overview of the mandate, background, and recommendations, examining how a set of prominent professionals and citizens viewed the problem facing school department governance, including its isolation and the longstanding credibility gap fueled by patronage politics. It also looks at continued tensions between “equality” and “quality,” which occupied the heart of court-ordered desegregation; rising demands on a system that lacked the capacity to serve a broad array …

Editor's Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Such is the unpredictability of Trump’s streaming executive orders that much of what I write may be irrelevant by the time this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy goes to press. But the articles in this issue will not lose their pertinence, no matter what the administration does. Indeed, given its predilection for “alternative facts,” they assume a greater relevance and consequential significance.

This issue of the journal has three parts. The first part had its origins in a conference on extremism held at the Center for Study of Intractable Conflicts (CRIC), Harris Manchester College Oxford in …

Civil Rights Gone Wrong: Racial Nostalgia, Historical Memory, And The Boston Busing Crisis In Contemporary Children’S Literature, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

On May 14, 2014, three white Boston city councilors refused to vote to approve a resolution honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. the Board of Education because, as one remarked, “I didn’t want to get into a debate regarding forced busing in Boston.” Against the recent national proliferation of celebrations of civil rights milestones and legislation, the controversy surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the court decision that mandated busing to desegregate Boston public schools speaks volumes about the historical memory of Boston’s civil rights movement. Two highly acclaimed contemporary works of children’s literature set during or inspired by Boston’s …

“Separatist City”: The Mandela, Massachusetts (Roxbury) Movement And The Politics Of Incorporation, Self-Determination, And Community Control, 1986–1988, Zebulon V. Miletsky, Tomás González

Trotter Review

November 4, 2016, marks 30 years since the historic referendum in which close to 50,000 citizens of Boston living in or near the predominantly Black area of “Greater Roxbury” voted on whether the area should leave Boston and incorporate as a separate municipality to be named in honor of former South African president Nelson and Winnie Mandela, or remain a part of Boston. The new community, what planners called “Greater Roxbury,” would have included wards in much or all of the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, the Fenway, the South End, and what was then known as Columbia …

Revised Emblems Of Erin In Novels By John Mcgahern And Colum Mccann (2015), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

In “Cathal’s Lake,” a 1996 story by Colum McCann, “a big [Irish] farmer with a thick chest” lives by a lake, “which in itself is a miniature countryside—ringed with chestnut trees and brambles, banked ten feet high on the northern side, with another mound of dirt on the eastern side, where frogsong can often be heard.” In By the Lake, a 2002 novel by John McGahern, an aging Irishman also lives by a lake, another enclosed space of tranquility, as is suggested in the opening lines: “The morning was clear. There was no wind on the lake. There was …

Introduction: Turning Pages, Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Pages, essays, and books pile up in libraries while pixilated words and paragraphs get packed away on hard disks or float in clouds: permanence versus ephemera. Yet, as underfunded libraries turn into media centers and as digital backup options proliferate, who can tell what pages will last and for how long. These essays have long been stored in volumes of the New England Journal of Public Policy (NEJPP) or made available on the journal’s website. This collection sets them in a fresh context and gives them an opportunity to reach new readers in a format that shows how …

New York Revisited (1992), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: City of the World: New York and Its People, by Bernie Bookbinder; New York, New York, by Oliver E. Allen; New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, from 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time, by Thomas Bender; The Heart of the World, by Nik Cohn; The Art of the City: Views and Versions of New York, by Peter Conrad; After Henry, by Joan Didion; Literary New York: A History and Guide, by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino; Our …

Good-Bye To All That: The Rise And Demise Of Irish America (1993), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

The works discussed in this article include: The Rascal King: The Life and Times of James Michael Curley 1874-1958, by Jack Beatty; JFK: Reckless Youth, by Nigel Hamilton; Textures of Irish America, by Lawrence J. McCaffrey; and Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston, by James M. O'Toole.

Reprinted from New England Journal of Public Policy 9, no. 1 (1993), article 9.

Tip O’Neill: Irish-American Representative Man (2003), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Man of the House as he aptly called himself in his 1987 memoir, stood as the quintessential Irish-American representative man for half of the twentieth century. O’Neill, often misunderstood as a parochial, Irish Catholic party pol, was a shrewd, sensitive, and idealistic man who came to stand for a more inclusive and expansive sense of his region, his party, and his church. O’Neill’s impressive presence both embodied the clichés of the Irish-American character and transcended its stereotypes by articulating a noble vision of inspired duty, determined responsibility, and joy in living. There was more to Tip …

Home And Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America (2013), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

From the 2013 Editor's Note by Padraig O'Malley: Shaun O’Connell has lost none of his touch. In “Home and Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America,” O’Connell juxtaposes two novels: Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy (1998) and Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn (2009) and reveals the parallels and contrasts that enrich the discussion of Irish and Irish American identities. Toibin, an Irish writer, would have us see an America, land of the free, as an open, inviting place but exacting in redeeming promises made; McDermott, an American writer, portrays an Ireland that is magical, a little bit of heaven, but finally a closed and bitter …

Editor's Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this edition of the journal several articles address a range of important, and in some cases too often overlooked policy issues, too broad in scope for their conclusions and recommendations to be encapsulated adequately in a brief paragraph. Their diversity, however, highlights a key characteristic of the New England Journal of Public Policy – that of being open to publishing articles that have insightful bearings on how public policy is addressed, not only in the New England states, but throughout the country and in the international community – a community of nations increasingly interdependent with constraints on national sovereignty …

Revised Emblems Of Erin In Novels By John Mcgahern And Colum Mccann, Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

In “Cathal’s Lake,” a 1996 story by Colum McCann, “a big [Irish] farmer with a thick chest” lives by a lake, “which in itself is a miniature countryside—ringed with chestnut trees and brambles, banked ten feet high on the northern side, with another mound of dirt on the eastern side, where frogsong can often be heard.” In By the Lake, a 2002 novel by John McGahern, an aging Irishman also lives by a lake, another enclosed space of tranquility, as is suggested in the opening lines: “The morning was clear. There was no wind on the lake. There was …

“So Succeeded By A Kind Providence”: Communities Of Color In Eighteenth Century Boston, Eric M. Hanson Plass

Graduate Masters Theses

The Freedom Trail has become an iconic symbol and major tourist attraction in the City of Boston. Yet since its Cold War-era inception, the Freedom Trail has remained problematically focused on a consensus history of leading white men who brought forth the American Revolution. Other heritage trails - most notably the Black Heritage Trail - have been established to correct the deficiencies of the Freedom Trail. These organizations have attempted to provide a revisionist counter-point by telling stories of internal struggle and by exploring groups traditionally overlooked by historians. However, with so many trails possessing so many particularized foci, many …

Introduction: Appreciating Difference, Barbara Lewis

Trotter Review

Are we a narrative nation, imagined and connected mentally, tied by a common history of disruption if not by contiguous geography? Lorick-Wilmot suggests that the stories we tell offer the basis of mutual understanding across distance and cultures and generations. In a reconfigured mental Diasporic cartography, where is our citadel, our castle (not to be confused with what Europeans named as slave castles of Africa)? The remains and monuments built in this hemisphere by iron will and the drive to change yesterday, uprooting it from the ground of inequality, still stand on the highest hill in northern Haiti, reminding us …

Editor's Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This issue of the journal publishes the proceedings of the two “Youth at Risk” seminars the Family Impact Institute conducted at the Massachusetts State House in April 2012 and March 2013, for state policy makers, including legislators, legislative aides, the governor’s staff, and agency representatives. What makes these seminars unique is that they focus researchers’ attention on what policy makers want and not on what researchers think they should want.

Among the hardest hit by the recession were the poor, whose numbers swelled when tens of thousands of the new jobless and their families joined them. Many of these families, …

Home And Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

From the Editor's Note by Padraig O'Malley: Shaun O’Connell has lost none of his touch. In “Home and Away: Imagining Ireland Imagining America,” O’Connell juxtaposes two novels: Alice McDermott’s Charming Billy (1998) and Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn (2009) and reveals the parallels and contrasts that enrich the discussion of Irish and Irish American identities. Toibin, an Irish writer, would have us see an America, land of the free, as an open, inviting place but exacting in redeeming promises made; McDermott, an American writer, portrays an Ireland that is magical, a little bit of heaven, but finally a closed and bitter place. …