The Kenneth E. Reeves Papers and Digital Collection is Now Available

Photo of Ken Reeves’ first campaign office, 1983

We are pleased to announce that the Kenneth E. Reeves Papers, 1982-2019 is now available for research. A selection of digitized material is also available.

Biography
Kenneth E. Reeves was born in 1951 in Detroit, Michigan and first moved to Cambridge to study at Harvard University as an undergraduate. He graduated from Harvard in 1973. After attending law school at the University of Michigan, Reeves returned to Cambridge and practiced as a lawyer while becoming involved in local politics. In 1990, Reeves was elected to the Cambridge City Council and later served as the city’s mayor between 1992-1995 and 2006-2008. When first elected mayor, Reeves became the first openly gay African American mayor in the United States.

During his time on the city council, Reeves was a member of the Cambridge Civics Association Slate and the Working Committee for a Cambridge Rainbow.

Collection Overview
Ranging from 1982-2019, this collection contains documents, photographs, and ephemera from Kenneth Reeves’ campaigns, terms as councilor and mayor, and personal life. The first two series of this collection contain a large range of campaign material, clippings and stories from local and national magazine and newspapers about Reeves, a small number of agenda from meetings, and a small number of photographs. The third series, composed of Reeves’ personal items, contains a large number of photographs of St. Paul AME Church’s Christmas performance of the Messiah from 1982 and 1983, as well as two portraits of Reeves, one painted by local citizen Al Sayles and one by acclaimed artist Gale Fulton Ross.

Exhibition: The Uncompromising Political Career of Alice K. Wolf

Exhibition:  The Uncompromising Political Career of Alice K. Wolf
August 14- September 10, 2023
Main Library, Lobby and Second Floor

In 1939, at the age of five, Alice K Wolf and her parents, Frederick and Renee Koerner, fled Nazi Austria and arrived in Cambridge, seeking a stable life where they would not be threatened for being Jewish.  Although the family soon settled in Brighton, 51 years later, Wolf became Cambridge’s first Jewish Mayor. 

Wolf felt that the injustice and fear she experienced as a child under the Nazi regime shaped the kind of politician she would later become:  a public servant committed to “equity and to fairness of the government.”*  Wolf, a champion of progressive ideals, spent her political career as an advocate for the rights of women, minorities, refugees, renters, children, students, and the LGBTQ+ community. 

After graduating from Boston’s Girls Latin School and Simmons College, she married Robert Wolf, moved to Cambridge, and had two sons, Eric and Adam.  Wolf spent the next 20 years of her career in the research and software development field: first as an applied psychology researcher at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories and later as a personnel director for the Computer Corporation of America based in Kendall Square. 

Wolf entered politics slowly as a concerned parent and member of the PTA.  In 1973, she decided to run for School Committee and was elected.  She served for eight years until she ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 1981.  But she won in the next election cycle and, served five terms between 1984 and 1994, include two years as Mayor from 1990-1991.  In 1996, Wolf won a seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, serving Cambridge and surrounding communities for 16 years. 

Alice Wolf died in her home in Cambridge on January 26, 2023 at the age of 89.  The Library is hosting a tribute to Wolf on September 9th at 2 pm. 

*”Go Ask Alice:  Cambridge’s ‘High Priestess of P.C.,'” Sunday People, Boston Sunday Herald, 12 December 1993, p. 6-9.

Scout Cambridge Profiles Cambridge Documentary Photographer Olive Pierce

Cambridge City Council Hearing at Rindge Tech auditorium on the death of Larry Largey, young people from the Roosevelt Towers area, October 1972, copyright Olive Pierce.

Thank you to Scout Cambridge for their recent article, From Rent Control to Riot Squads: The Photographs of Olive Pierce, profiling the amazing work of documentary photographer Olive Pierce as well as the work we do in the Cambridge Room.

Riotous Ride

Tired of Summer? Tired of the muggy heat? Good! Because today we are going to pretend its winter.

While going through the vertical file the other week this item caught the eye.

The annual sleigh-ride of the Cambridge City Council? Yup, sleigh-ride. Sleigh rides were popular entertainment in the Victorian winter time. The Cambridge newspapers hold numerous postings about YMCA sleigh-rides, church sleigh-rides, women’s clubs and the city government.  Who would have known? Well not the archivist of the city papers because as a January 15, 1881 Cambridge Chronicle points out, the revels were “not to be printed with the city documents”.

And why is that? Well it seems like the good gentlemen of the city government had a little more fun than the average stoic Victorian male should.  The sleigh-ride consisted of men from the previous term of City Councilors, now relieved of the “cares of office” and free to celebrate with a sleigh-ride to Lexington.

The newspaper description of the 1881 revealed that before hand they drank so much “milk” that the landlord complained that “the cows were dry and the sleighs ready”. Off they went whisking away, loudly singing such songs as “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. They stopped for a rest and proceeded to draw up a resolution (they must not have remembered that they were no longer actively serving) to give themselves the title “Honorable” but half of them were too drunk to sign it. Finally when they were all sober again and had eaten the listened to each other give speeches. After which were numerous dances and no doubt more to drink.

The journalist writes

…the small hours came round unnoticed, till finally few had strength left to even laugh aloud, but their faces had gotten so fixed in position that they were left at their various houses sometime toward morning still smiling over the frolic of the City Government of 1880.

The City Government of 1886 must have learned what sort of press bad behavior got their predecessors and the accounting of their sleigh-ride festivities is less than thrilling. They left on time, had a “smoking hot supper” and “reached Cambridge on their return at good Puritan hours” recounts the Cambridge Chronicle. Perhaps it just became too dull a tradition to maintain…

Cambridge Not Sure Women Should be Police Officers

Cambridge Chronicle 19 October 1918.

Cambridge had a long history of women doing police work as social workers under the auspices of the Social Services Center.  When in 1918, the city tried to pass an ordinance to hire and pay women police officers, the Cambridge City Council said no.  There was a lively discussion in which Councillor Apted argued for the city to pay for women already doing the work of police officers whereas Councillor Counihan declared it was an unnecessary expense.  Councillor Stratton asked for the Council on Public Safety to take up the matter, causing a delay in the city hiring women police officers.

It wouldn’t be until 1921 when Edith J. Taylor of 428 Broadway became the first women on the Cambridge Police force.    The brief history on Taylor’s career, written by the Cambridge Police Department, can be read here.

Edith J. Taylor, Cambridge’s first woman Police Officer.