The University of Virginia Library is pleased to present
the seventeenth Tracy W. and Katherine W. McGregor
Distinguished Lecture in American History


'NO RIGHT TO AN HONEST LIVING':
THE STRUGGLES OF BOSTON'S BLACK WORKERS
DURING THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR

with Jacqueline Jones
Professor Emerita, Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women's History,
and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History
The University of Texas at Austin


Thursday, October 5, 2023
4:00pm Lecture | 5:00pm Reception

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
University of Virginia

Register Here!
 

Antebellum Boston had a well-earned reputation as a center of radical abolitionism, with outspoken, militant Black and white activists.  Yet the city’s Black workers, facing pervasive discrimination in the labor market, remained stuck on the lowest rungs of the job ladder, condemned to irregular, ill-paid work, or to no work at all.  For their own reasons, potential white allies—including abolitionists, city officials, Republicans, and labor reformers-- failed to advocate for these workers. Nevertheless, Black women and men showed remarkable resourcefulness in providing for their families and sustaining a vibrant community life.  The story of nineteenth-century Boston is the story of the United States writ small—a place where the injustices of everyday life were at odds with a rhetorical commitment to fairness and equality.

 

About the McGregor Fund and the Tracy W. McGregor Library

The Tracy W. and Katherine W. McGregor Distinguished Lecture in American History was endowed by the McGregor Fund, established in 1925 by Detroit philanthropists Tracy McGregor and Katherine Whitney McGregor to support charitable works in their areas of interest.

Tracy W. McGregor was initially attracted to book collecting through his love of English literature, though American history eventually took precedence. In the decade before his death in 1936, McGregor formed an outstanding collection of over 5,000 rare works of Americana and 1,000 rare volumes of English literature, which he intended to donate to a deserving southern university. In 1938 the McGregor Fund selected the UVA Library as the collection’s permanent home. Since then, in addition to endowing the McGregor Lecture, the McGregor Fund has established an endowment for the Tracy W. McGregor Library, which has more than quadrupled in size; provided funding to transform the McGregor Room into the UVA community’s favorite reading room; and most recently supported the digitization of over 500 of the McGregor Library’s most significant books.