What's new

The project undertaken in this online exhibit is significant, both in topic and in extent. Ultimately, TARC intends for this exhibit to stand as an introductory resource for all who are interested in the history of black faculty, staff, and students at Tufts University, with a descriptive timeline of events as well as associated biographical and topical pages. As such, updates will be made to exhibit items, text, structure, and content on a rolling basis. Please refer back to this page of a summary of new additions to this exhibit.

Much of the text of the “Another Light On The Hill” exhibit is Professor Gerald Gill’s original work, written between 1988 and 2007, with certain stylistic revisions. For example, while Professor Gill used the phrase African-American, the current iteration uses the 2022 stylistically preferred Black. Other changes include standardizing how alums are referred to and some small grammar and style edits for clarity.

There are two major changes to Professor Gill’s words. First, in the introduction, there is additional context to the W. E. B. DuBois quote, to indicate that DuBois was referring to Tufts as part of a larger trend. In the original text, Professor Gill’s phrasing was ambiguous and did not quite match the context of the DuBois quote.

The second major change in an expansion of research. As Professor Gill passed away in 2007, his research did not include information about Black Tufts students in the 21st century. The section on Black students from 2000 to 2021 is entirely original research and writing, although it drew on similar sources to have Professor Gill would have used, such as yearbooks, the Tufts Observer and Tufts Daily, and photographs and other archival material held at TARC.

A recent expansion of this work is the addition of a new exhibit based on Gerald Gill's work to create a walking tour of sites related to African American history at Tufts. That exhibit is available here.

In 2020, biographies of all people listed on the on Africana Memorial Plaque and were added to the People section on this exhibit.