Congratulations to our 2023 Award Winners!

Congratulations to the 2023 Bay State Legacy Award, Mass History Commendation, and STAR Award recipients!

The Massachusetts History Alliance is proud to announce that the 2023 Bay State Legacy Award, presented to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the interpretation and presentation of Massachusetts history, is awarded to Martin H. Blatt.

Marty Blatt, emeritus professor of public history, Northeastern University, previously served as program director. He worked for 24 years in the National Park Service (NPS), eighteen in Boston and six in Lowell. He is the recipient of the Kelly Memorial Award from the National Council on Public History for outstanding achievement in public history (2020) and the NPS Director’s Award for excellence in cultural resource management (2013). He has published books, articles, and reviews in a wide variety of venues.

Some public history programs Blatt has organized include:

Public reading of William Apess’s eulogy to King Philip at Old South Meeting House (2023)
Part of a national team, Humanities Action Lab, which organized exhibit on mass incarceration. The Northeastern exhibit component focused on the role of Malcolm X on the Norfolk Prison debate team. (2017).
Historical pageant, “Roots of Liberty – The Haitian Revolution and the American Civil War.” (2013)
Program entitled, “Abolitionism in Black and White: The Anti-Slavery Community of Boston and Cambridge” (2009).
Traveling exhibit, “Gulag: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom,” (2006).
Program entitled, “Hope and Glory: The Centennial Celebration of the Monument to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54^th Massachusetts Regiment” (1997).
Program in Lowell, “The Meaning of Slavery in the North,” (1993).

Learn more about the Bay State Legacy Award here.

Mass Humanities is honored to award the 2023 Mass History Commendation to The History Project. The award recognizes excellence by a Mass Humanities grantee. The following is taken from The History Project’s website, where you can find out more about their mission and activities:

The History Project is focused exlusively on documenting and preserving the history of New England’s LGBTQ communities and sharing that history with LGBTQ individuals, organizations, allies, and the public. They maintain one of the largest independent LGBTQ archives in the nation, which includes more than 250 collections from organizations and individuals encompassing more than one million documents. Collections range from the records of early Gay Liberation organizations and photographs of pre-Stonewall Boston to objects such as T-shirts and buttons and materials documenting the marriage equality movement. These documents and artifacts are processed and made available to researchers by a dedicated group of volunteers from the community who donate hundreds of hours of time annually to the organization.

Their achievements include the exhibit Public Faces/Private Lives, which became the bestselling book, Improper Bostonians, as well as exhibitions focused on LGBTQ photojournalism, Provincetown’s White Party, the history of Boston Pride, and the LGBTQ community’s response to HIV/AIDS.

THP’s many outreach activities include Out of the Archives, a series of public talks focused on our archival collections; the HistoryMaker Awards, which honor established and emerging activists; Into the Streets, their walking tours program; and events such as film screenings and exhibitions developed in partnership with other organizations. They also offer engagement opportunities for groups of students, colleagues, and anyone interested in LGBTQ+ history.

The former Baystate Historical League’s Local History Hero award was resurrected by the Massachusetts History Alliance in 2021 as the MHA Star Awards. With this award, we honor members of the history field who have demonstrated long term commitment, outstanding work with concrete results, exemplary innovation, local leadership for change, or contributions to equity and justice. MHA Star Awards are granted to Massachusetts people who have made outstanding contributions to the research and interpretation of the history of their communities. We call them our local history heroes. The winners of this year’s MHA STAR Awards are: