This Black History Month sees the launch of the Cambridge Black Bookmark Project, giving young readers free bookmarks – photos on the front, biographies on the back – introducing more people to a generation of black trailblazers not yet given physical markers around the city.

Gertrude Wright Morgan grew up experiencing and demonstrating Black excellence from her earliest days. But she also knew first-hand the societal and personal injustice and cruelty White people could inflict on her, her family, and her people. For the rest of her life, she pushed the boundaries drawn tightly around her as a Black person—and especially as a Black woman—working to expose and fight against White supremacist calumny and oppression and to create opportunities for coming generations of African Americans and all women.

Forgotten until renewed interest in Gertrude Wright Morgan led to her rediscovery, Adina E. White was once a well-known figure in Cambridge. An intellectual, an artist, a businesswoman, and a supporter of local charities, she led an unusual life, and we can only regret that, at least so far, we have so little of her story in her own voice.