New exhibition highlights struggles to desegregate public beaches and pools

It’s a truly spectacular season for the arts, and at the top of our to-do list is Rights Along the Shore, which “considers the sociopolitical, economic, and intersectional contours that continue to realign Boston in the wake of 50-year-old legislative desegregation efforts that drew a wedge between Boston’s least-resourced residents.”

More from the BCA below:

Boston Center for the Arts is pleased to present Rights Along the Shore by Danielle Abrams and Mary Ellen Strom, a new exhibition that highlights the struggles to desegregate swimming sites in Northern and Southern US locations. Artists Danielle Abrams and Mary Ellen Strom concentrate in particular on the social transformation and social costs ignited by the NAACP-organized “wade-in” resistance at South Boston’s Carson Beach in the summer of 1975. 

An inter-textual exhibition that features video and photography, Rights Along the Shorefollows the trajectory of Abrams’ and Strom’s long-running series titled “Wade Ins.” “Wade Ins” are a set of research-based projects that employ participatory practices designed to examine recreational segregation in the South and de-facto segregation in the North. Their projects have examined the histories of New Orleans’ Lincoln Beach, Washington, D.C.’s Anacostia Pool, and Boston’s Carson Beach.

To produce Rights Along the Shore, Abrams and Strom have had long-standing conversations with many involved directly in different desegregation efforts throughout the country. In Boston’s case, those collaborators include Leon Rock, Columbia Point Projects Youth Organizer and advisor to the 1975 NAACP President Thomas Atkins; writer, educator, and activist Michael Patrick McDonald, author of All Souls: A Family Story from Southie and advocate for survivor families in Boston’s anti-violence movement; Alicia Baez, former Roxbury resident who attended South Boston High School; Caitlyn Murphy, South Boston resident, educator, and youth advocate; and leaders and participants in South Boston Neighborhood House’s after school programs among others.

Through May 28, 2022. More info at bostonarts.org/event/rights-along-the-shore