On Thursday, March 28, 2024, Dr. Annalise Fonza will return to Springfield, Massachusetts to present a lecture featuring interviews that she conducted with state lawmakers and staff on Beacon Hill in the early 2000’s when she worked as a legislative aide in the office of former State Representative Benjamin Swan and as co-host of his Friday morning radio program, The Black Love Experience. Upon her arrival in Massachusetts (in 2002), as the Rev. Fonza, she was appointed to serve as the pastor of the West Springfield First United Methodist Church. During her final two years in New England, she was a resident of Springfield. In 2008, the ever-itinerate Dr. Fonza moved to South Carolina to join the Jonathan Jasper Wright Institute for the Study of Southern African American History, Culture and Policy at Claflin University – an historically black college – in Orangeburg, South Carolina. At Claflin, she taught in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, and she taught in the Department of History and Sociology.
In 2010, she graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMASS) with a Ph.D. in Regional Planning. She also worked briefly on special assignment as a data intern with the City of Springfield Department of Planning and Economic Development; as the Family Services Coordinator at the Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity, Inc.; and as a planning data analyst/intern at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. In 2010 she graduated summa cum laude from UMASS Amherst with a Ph.D. in Regional Planning. While a resident of the Pioneer Valley, she was also very active with the establishment of WXOJ-LP, a Pacifica affiliate radio station in Northampton, Massachusetts, as the coordinator of the station’s African American Affairs Collective. She identifies today as a womanist urban planning scholar, a writer, an atheist, and she is the author of Rebuilding Black Communities, With Love, which is a short e-publication that is available on all digital platforms.
Following her graduation from UMASS, Dr. Fonza returned for about five years consecutively to feature highlights from the interviews that she conducted with Springfield residents such as: Roger Williams, Benjamin Swan, George Marshall, Ida Flynn, and Candice Lopes. Her last presentation at the Springfield Museums was in 2012. Dr. Fonza’s research and teaching sheds light on the everyday practice of urban and regional planning, particularly as it pertains to the development, or not, of black communities and former black ghettos. Further, her 2010 dissertation, Troubling City Planning Discourses: A Womanist Analysis of Urban and Social Renewal Planning in Springfield, Massachusetts: 1960 -1980, is archived at the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History. In 2022, she published two online courses at Planetizen, Inc., on the power of culture and placemaking for planners nationwide who wish to continue their certification in the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP).
In this presentation, Dr. Fonza will present a lecture to share highlights from the interviews that she conducted with black women legislators who were elected to serve the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from Beacon Hill in honor of Women’s History Month. The title of her program is: Politics are Local and Politics are Personal: Black Women in Service to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The following legislators and staff that are featured in the Fonza Collection of Oral Histories that is archived at the Lyman and Merrie Wood Museum of Springfield History: Senator Linda Dorcena Forry, who retired in 2018; Mukiya Baker Gomez, a former political aide to State Representative Gloria Fox who is now retired; State Representative Shirley Owens-Hicks, also retired; State Representative Gloria Fox; Representative Benjamin Swan, who retired in 2016 following a little more than twenty-six years in the legislature; Mattie Moss from the Office of the Speaker of the House; LaRose Jerkins who operated the House Lobby Phone; and Odell Ruffin – House Court Officer, known for his unmistakable “Roll Call” for members to return to the House floor for official business.
According to Dr. Fonza, she opened the collection for the purpose of preserving local black history makers and to honor the placemaking efforts of local blacks, lawmakers, and Commonwealth staff who at times butted heads with local leaders, including those from the Springfield Planning Department, such as Mr. Roger Williams who died in 2005. Written transcripts of her students’ interviews with Springfield residents such as the late Ray Jordan and Dorothy Pryor, have been available online at Springfield Technical Community College for almost a decade, since 2015.
In her upcoming Women’s History Month lecture, Fonza will discuss the historical significance of black women who have served the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which often unfolded at the intersection of their personal commitments and experiences as residents of Boston’s many neighborhoods, such as Roxbury.
One such example was State Representative Gloria Fox who Dr. Fonza interviewed in 2006. At that time, Representative Fox, who was elected to the 7th Suffolk District, had already been in office for twenty-one years. Representative Fox was born in Boston, and she grew up in several foster homes. She married and became a mother to two children, but following a divorce, she became very active in community organizing doing what she described as “street work.” Representative Fox, who is now retired, said that she became active in local politics to join the effort to stop local urban renewal efforts from destroying her neighborhood with interstate highway development.
According to Dr. Fonza, “there is not a political decision that is made that does not affect us all personally and the black women who held office in the early twentieth century are no exception to that rule.” Of course, former Representative Benjamin Swan has been invited to comment on the importance of women’s history.
Please join Dr. Fonza on Thursday, March 28, 2024. The program begins at 12:15pm and will conclude at 1:30pm. The cost is free for members of the Springfield Museums and for non-members it is $4.00. This is a hybrid event. To attend please register in advance at: https://springfieldmuseums.org/program/politics-are-local-and-politics-are-personal-black-women-in-service-to-the-commonwealth-of-massachusetts-in-the-21st-century/ ■