# Lowell Legacies Project ### **An Introduction to the Lowell Legacies Project** Lowell House is named after the Lowell family. The first Lowells settled on the homelands of the Pawtucket nation, in the area now known as Cape Ann, in 1639. Over the following centuries, the Lowell family became members of the Boston and New England elite, traversing many different areas of public life (politics, art, education, philosophy, and philanthropy). One of them, A. Lawrence Lowell, eventually became the president of Harvard University from 1909 until 1933. Like any family, the Lowells are a complicated bunch and so are the legacies they have left behind for us to acknowledge, recover, and wrestle with. Luckily, their privileged status means that their papers are stored in piles upon piles of boxes in the Harvard University Archives, waiting to be uncovered and studied. The Lowell Legacies Project (LLP) is composed of a team of Tutor and student archivists who investigate Lowell family history, with a particular focus on their roles in building, upholding, and challenging systems of oppression (including, but not limited to, white supremacy, racism, enslavement, settler colonialism, antisemitism, sexism, and homophobia). LLP was conceived of and founded by Residential Tutor Anca Wilkening, who took initiative to secure resources and train student archivists in order to explore the complex legacy of the Lowell family. This work allows students the opportunity to practice and hone their archival and historical skill sets. Additionally, the LLP works toward contextualizing the portraits and statues hung around Lowell House, so that students can more robustly engage with the legacies of figures that have been deemed memorable for the Lowell community. ### **Project Reports** ["A. Lawrence Lowell and Socialism"](https://doi.org/10.17613/5xry6-2g213) – Alia Al-Wir '26 ["A. Lawrence Lowell and Chinese Students: The Harvard Medical School of China and 20th-Century International Education"](https://doi.org/10.17613/dez07-dys76) – Emma Lu '26 ["The Menorah Society and A. Lawrence Lowell: Harvard Jewish Life in the Early 20th Century and a Lesser-Known Case of Antisemitism"](https://doi.org/10.17613/d4ktn-g0938) – Chance Bonar ### **Future Projects** The legacy and impact of President A. Lawrence Lowell at and beyond Harvard in the early 20th century is complex and vast. Lowell is best known for a range of activities at Harvard: creating the undergraduate House system, instituting the system of [academic concentrations](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1959/12/15/lowells-regime-introduced-concentration-and-house/), attempting to impose a [15% quota ](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/3/26/retrospection-president-lowells-quotas/)on Jewish students, spearheading a ["Secret Court"](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/11/21/the-secret-court-of-1920-at/) that persecuted queer students, and attempting to [resegregate Harvard Yard](https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=1061363&p=7716440) by removing Black students from University housing. However, there is still much more to uncover, given that the [Harvard University Archives collection regarding Lowell's presidency](https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/4/resources/6680/digital_only) contains folders labeled, for example: - "Admission of Women" - "American Breeders Association" - "Columbus Day celebration" - "Committee on the Use of English by Students" - "Confederate Harvard men" - "Epidemic – Influenza" - "Immigration" - "Ku Klux Klan" - "Memorial to Confederate Soldiers" - "Pilgrim Commemoration" - "Harvard Commission on Western History" Additionally, much archival research has and still remains to be done on [Amy Lowell](https://poets.org/poet/amy-lowell), A. Lawrence Lowell's sister. Amy Lowell was a renowned poet in the Boston area, who was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize. She is also remembered for her domestic partnership with Ada Dywer Russell, and was a prominent figure in early 20th-century lesbian and queer communities. ### **Archivists** *Founding Senior Archivist*: Anca Wilkening (2023–2024; consultant for LLP 2024–2025) *2024–2025 Senior Archivist*: Chance Bonar *2024–2025 student archivists* - Imani Fonfield - Arianna Fowler - Sophie Garrigus - Nicole Lee - Emma Lu - Jorden Wallican-Okyere - Alia Al-Wir *2023–2024 student archivists* - Christine Corcoran - Izzy Ebede - LyLena Estabine - Imani Fonfield - Emma Lu - Liliana Price - Alia Al-Wir