S10 E02 | Part 1: The Hour and the Man: Robert Morris's Legal Legacy

Welcome to a 2-part series on Robert Morris, who was a force for justice in nineteenth-century Boston. He championed school desegregation, defended fugitives from slavery, supported equal rights for women, and advocated for Irish immigrants. Morris, his wife Catherine, and their son Robert Jr. were also early major donors and multifaceted supporters of Boston College in its earliest most fledgling years. Christy Pottroff and Justin Brown-Ramsey explore the story of the Morris family who transformed their institution, Boston’s abolitionist movement, and the struggle for civil rights more broadly. The cohosts share a portrait of the Morris family and their historical impact by engaging recent scholarship by Jacqueline Jones, Ilyon Woo, & Kabria Baumgartner. They also interview library staff at Boston College who have worked directly with the Morris family collection in the archives (Laurel Davis and Andrew Isidoro), and writing from undergraduates who read from these books and helped recover the Morris family legacy. This podcast tells the story of ongoing efforts to preserve and reconstitute the Morris Family Collection, donated to BC at the end of the nineteenth century. Along the way, the pair discuss how Robert and Catherine Morris worked individually and as a pair to shape the political and educational landscape of their city, doing so in a way that set them apart as trailblazers in the nineteenth century’s multifaceted civil rights movements. Post-production support by Jess Van Gilder (Georgia Tech). Transcript and link to full size cover art [https://bit.ly/S10E02E03Transcript].