As part of a Boston Library Consortium collaborative digitization project to make primary source information about desegregation in Boston Public Schools available through the Digital Commonwealth and Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the Boston College Libraries have digitized and posted online a small selection of documents from the Citywide Coordinating Council records held at the Burns Library.
The Citywide Coordinating Council (CCC) records are the institutional files of the independent, autonomous body created by the courts to oversee desegregation in Boston Public Schools from 1975-1978. Both the activities of the Council and the process of desegregation of Boston's public schools are documented in this archival collection. The now-digitized documents are a sampling of questionnaires, or “monitoring reports,” completed by volunteer observers, school administrators, and students.
For the selection process, we identified reports that would complement those already available through Digital Commonwealth from our BLC partner institutions, including University of Massachusetts Boston, Joseph P. Healey Library and Northeastern University Libraries. ARL/SAA Mosaic intern Ayoola White carried out the digitization as part of her 2016/2017 internship in the Boston College Libraries. The digitized reports were reviewed and redacted to address privacy issues. The Boston College excerpt of documents can be found on Boston College Libraries’ Special Collections Online; the full CCC collection description is in the Library catalog and the more detailed finding aid; and related BLC partner institutions’ digital efforts in this area can be found on Digital Commonwealth through the subject search Segregation in education--Massachusetts--Boston.
Other materials from this collection and related information are on view until February 2018 at the Burns Library and in the O’Neill Library Reading Room as part of an exhibit entitled Desegregating Boston's Schools: Crisis and Community Activism, 1963-1977.
