Black Americans who were pioneers in the military, journalism and women’s sports called Boston home during the 19th century.

Plans to bring back the iconic Boston music venue, The Great Scott, reveal a new version of the iconic green awning that could be returning to the Allston neighborhood.

In economic collapse — “dying on the vine,” as U.S. News and World Report described it in the late 1950s — Boston’s Old World sense of itself as a New World European village was crumbling as surely as ...