2021 Annual Founders Day Symposium The FIGHT for EQUALITY in FLORENCE: The Northampton Association, David Ruggles, and Their Legacy Today Thursday April 8, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. on ZOOM Register HERE for the David Ruggles Center’s Annual Founders Day Symposium. The Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI) was founded in Florence on this date in [...]

A 1.75 mile walk in the historic African American neighborhoods of Florence. We'll visit homes of Sojourner Truth, David Ruggles, Basil and Cynthia Dorsey, Hannah Randall, Henry Anthony, Laura Knowles Washington and others. The story of this unique community will be told where it happened. The tour begins at the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue at [...]

The David Ruggles Center along with massHumanities and Historic Northampton is cosponsoring a public reading of Frederick Douglass's 1852 historic 4th of July address on Saturday, July 3 at 11AM at Historic Northampton. We will be joining many communities statewide in this reading as part of this annual massHumanities event. Often now referred to as, [...]

A continuation of the well-attended Juneteenth tour led by local historian and DRC co-founder Steve Strimer. We'll start where we left off, at the David Ruggles Center on historic Nonotuck Street. The tour passes by the homes of the Cooper and Willson families who left Florence on the Underground Railroad to settle in Canada by [...]

The David Ruggles Center for History and Education will be closed Sunday 8/22/21 due to anticipated inclement weather. We will be open 8/29/21 12-4 and on Sundays 12-4 in September as well. If you have any questions, please email info@davidrugglescenter.org.

Located at 225 Nonotuck St. in Florence, the museum at the David Ruggles Center for History and Education is open to in-person visitors, Sunday afternoons, 12-4, June-October. Visits can also be arranged by appointment- please email info@davidrugglescenter.org. Covid Protocol: Masks are required for vaccinated people. We intend to keep the galleries uncrowded. If there is [...]

Join your Northampton Neighbors for a walking tour of the abolitionist history of Florence. Learn about the radical abolitionist utopian community that settled the village in the 1840s and left a lasting imprint. We meet at the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue at the intersection of Pine and Park Streets at 1:00 on Tuesday, September 21. [...]

The David Ruggles Center (DRC) is collaborating with Friends of Northampton Trails (FNT) to offer a guided bike tour of the notable homesteads and landmarks of the mid-19th century Utopian community experiment in Florence, MA that sought to create a society based on equality of race, class and gender. Tom Goldscheider, a member of the [...]

Stop by our table next Saturday during your stroll on Florence Night Out as we celebrate our neighborhood past and present. Take a few minutes to imagine 175 years ago when some of our country's greatest fighters for racial justice as well as economic and gender equality walked the same streets that we step on [...]

We will harvest our crops of sugar beets and flax, talk about how they are processed along with a hands-on demonstration, and reveal the important history surrounding the cultivation of these two crops in Florence. The Grow Food Northampton Community Garden 140 Meadow St. Florence, MA For more information, contact Ellena Baum at ellena@growfoodnorthampton.org info@growfoodnorthampton.com