Boston Teachers Union Collection: Collections at UMass Boston

This collection includes materials related to the Boston Teachers Union, including the union's newsletter and newspaper, the Boston Union Teacher, and interviews from the Boston Teachers Union Oral History Project. The physical collection also includes copies of every contract the BTU has negotiated. These contracts and the physical copies of the Boston Union Teacher are located at the University Archives & Special Collections at the UMass Boston Joseph P. Healey Library.

This collection consists of digitized issues of the Boston Union Teacher from 1963 to 2010. There are 377 digitized issues of the publication from this time period, though not a complete run.

This collection comprises oral histories given by members of the Boston Teachers Union (BTU). The BTU, Local 66 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), represents over 10,000 teachers, paraprofessionals, and retirees in Boston. The union celebrated its 75th Anniversary in Fall 2020. Inspired by the occasion, BTU Secretary-Treasurer Betsy Drinan developed the idea of an in-depth oral history project with BTU leaders, organizers, and members, exploring the lives and labor of educators, the process of union organizing, and how BTU members experienced the evolution of schooling and organizing in Boston over the past seventy-five years. Drinan partnered with Nick Juravich of UMass Boston to launch the BTU Oral History Project in January 2020, with the goal of providing a unique record of teaching and organizing in Boston for future BTU members, as well as for UMass Boston students, scholars, educators, and journalists studying these topics.

This collection contains scans, images, and video interviews from a small-scale scanning day held by the Boston Teachers Union on November 17, 2018. This event was inspired by larger scanning days that are part of the Mass. Memories Road Show.

The Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. chambers papers are a day-to-day file documentation of "Morgan v. Hennigan," also known as the Boston Schools Desegregation Case. The above link connects to a home page for the digitized parts of this collection, as well as its finding aid. The entire collection is located physically in the University Archives & Special Collections at the UMass Boston Joseph P. Healey Library.

Mosaic was a publication produced by professionals and students from South Boston High School in 1980 in the aftermath of the court-ordered desegregation ruling by Judge Garrity. Students wrote poems and stories, conducted interviews, and took photographs for the publication. The link above will take you to the home page for the digital collection of Mosaic and the collection's finding aid. All eleven issues of Mosaic have been digitized and put online. The physical copies live in the University Archives & Special Collections at the UMass Boston Joseph P. Healey Library.

This project explores the events of the 1919 Boston Police Strike. On September 9, 1919, more than 1,100 Boston Police officers went on strike for fair wages, decent working conditions and their right to organize. To commemorate the centennial of this event, the 1919 Boston Police Strike Project created a database of the strikers’ biographies. As the project gained visibility, many family members of strikers approached the project team with stories and memories to share. To respond to this interest, UMass Boston launched a pilot project to interview striker descendants and to collect photographs and personal stories that document how the strikers and the strike have been remembered. This collection currently includes three pilot interviews with descendants.

The Ione Malloy papers are a collection of materials compiled by Ione Malloy and related to her teaching at South Boston High School during the school desegregation crisis of the 1970s in Boston and to her subsequent memoir, "Southie Won't Go," which chronicled her teaching experience at that time.The physical copies of these papers live in the University Archives & Special Collections at the UMass Boston Joseph P. Healey Library.

This collection comprises transcriptions of oral history interviews conducted by Robert C. Hayden of Black railroad laborers.