Development Log: Safia Ibrahim
June 2026
I began working with Reckonings at the start of my freshman year at Northeastern University as a Project Assistant in Fall 2024. I grew up in Boston and graduated high school in the Dorchester neighborhood, but I never felt truly knowledgeable about Boston’s history until I started this work. From the underrepresented jazz scene in Boston to the historical involvement of organizations like Freedom House, I began to see a version of my own city that I had never been taught.
As a Project Assistant, I have taken on a range of roles, from administrative tasks to research duties. As a researcher, I looked into the history of jazz in Boston, studied Union United Methodist Church, and worked on other research connected to Reckonings. I also supported events including the Charles River Jazz Festival, a free jazz festival, and the Reckonings Community Network Series, where individuals come together to connect over shared work and interests. These experiences gave me a foundation for understanding Boston not just as the city I grew up in, but as a place with layers of history I had never been exposed to.
One of my most meaningful research opportunities was studying E. Alice Taylor. I was initially introduced to her through Dr. Poiger and Mr. Collin Knight. Dr. Poiger was preparing to teach a service-learning course, History of Boston, in Fall 2025, and Mr. Collin Knight joined the course as one of our community partners. At the same time, I was serving as the course’s service-learning teaching assistant. Throughout the semester, students worked in groups to create projects highlighting six individuals who had made either major or lesser-known contributions to Boston’s history and communities. E. Alice Taylor was one of the individuals selected for the course.
When I was first introduced to her, she was simply referred to as “Alice Taylor,” so I did not realize that information available under that name referred to a different woman. I began my research using Black-owned newspapers such as The Guardian and the Boston Chronicle, along with other historical sources, unaware that I was gathering information connected to both E. Alice Taylor and Alice H. Taylor, a Boston community leader whose legacy is honored by an affordable housing complex named after her and by a Northeastern scholarship that once had her name.
E. Alice Taylor was born in Arkansas in 1892 and fled to Boston in 1927 after witnessing traumatic racial violence. She was an educator, entrepreneur, and community activist who believed economic independence and social justice activism were not separate pursuits but interconnected strategies for racial advancement. Building on the foundation laid by Annie Malone’s Poro system, Taylor opened a hairdressing school and salon at 412 Massachusetts Avenue that became, by some accounts, the oldest and largest Black-owned business in New England at the time, training generations of women for ownership and independence. She went on to found the Professional Hairdressers Association, co-found the Housewives League of Boston, and become a leader in the local NAACP for 50 years, work she was able to sustain in part because her business success gave her the economic freedom to advocate freely. Her life is a clear example of how entrepreneurship and activism can move forward together rather than put people on separate paths.
It wasn’t until I spent extensive time researching over the summer of 2025 and went directly into the Northeastern Archives, that I discovered that E. Alice Taylor and Alice H. Taylor were two completely different people. Without going through the archives in person, I would have never discovered this, or it would have taken me much longer to figure out. The key takeaway from this experience is how important physical archives are. We often rely on information that’s readily available online, but there is so much waiting to be discovered by going through archival material directly. It can be time-consuming, but the depth of what you find is something you simply don’t get to access otherwise.
I had the opportunity to present this research twice. The first time was at the conference “The Way We Were: Roxbury Wall Street” in September 2025. Some of the audience members were current members of the church Taylor was involved with the majority of her time in Boston, possibly even people who were there when she was alive. Being in that community setting let me connect with people who had a closer, more personal relationship to my research, and it connected me with others who had even more knowledge to share. The second time was at the Center for Digital Scholarship Student Showcase, where the audience was larger and included people affiliated with Northeastern University.
As a Human Services & Psychology major, it is difficult at first glance to see how my major connects to work involving historical digital archives. But Reckonings is, at its core, a community-facing project. I have learned so much about protecting and prioritizing the voices of community members, and about building trust while also maintaining factual integrity. I have learned that preserving or revitalizing a piece of history that most people have forgotten is never work done alone. Everyone involved is constantly seeking community, and digital archival work is its own kind of niche community, one where collaboration happens whenever people come together to share resources and ideas. I have learned so much from the Reckonings team, from past student workers, to staff, to faculty members. One of the most memorable parts of this experience has been having conversations with people I would not normally have the chance to speak with. This work has given me more than research experience. It has given me a deeper relationship with the city I grew up in, and a better understanding of what it means to hold someone else’s story with care.