The Mashpee Historical Commission and the Mashpee Public Library have joined together to cosponsor a Speaker’s Program. The programs will be held at the Mashpee Public Library on the first Saturday of the month, starting at 2:00 pm. The program is free and refreshments will be served. All are invited. Programs will run during the months of February, March, April, May, June, October and November 2019 and will be a lead up to the town’s 150th Anniversary in 2020.
The first program will take place on February 2, 2019 at 2:00 pm at the Mashpee Public Library It features Mashpee Nine, a film and discussion with Paula Peters
Paula will introduce her moving film of the 1976 event in Mashpee that shocked the community. It is a story of “injustice, outrage, activism and vindication that fostered cultural pride and unity among the Mashpee Wampanoags.” A Question and Answer period will follow. Paula will autograph her book Mashpee Nine which will also be for sale.
The March 2, 2019 program is entitled Climate Change and Rivers: Global to Local Perspective with Woods Hole Research Center scientist Anya Suslova. This all-important talk, with ramifications for Mashpee, will include a brief film.
On April 6, 2019 historian and attorney Barbara Berenson will speak on her new book, “Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers, Barbara is the author of numerous books on Boston, Abolitionism and the Civil War. Her book comes in advance of the 100th anniversary of women getting the right to vote.
On May 4, 2019 Mashpee resident Steven Kramer will recount the moving story of his father's experience as a navigator in a B-17 during WWII, who was shot down over Berlin in 1944 and spent a year in Stalag III, a POW camp in a program entitled “An Individual’s Story of World War II, a Prisoner of War, and the Recent Experience of Visiting a Nazi Concentration Camp .
On the Second Saturday in June, The Origins and Early History of Wilsons Grove - the Beginnings of Popponesset will take place with Popponesset resident Dr. George East. He will trace the beginnings of Wilsons Grove in the Popponesset section of Mashpee. His program includes an incredible number of photographs showing how the area use to look and how it has changed over time.
