After experiencing the museum, Montgomery felt different. My class was silent. Nobody cared to crack any jokes. The air even started to smell different — like rotting garbage, reminiscent of the Southern Magnolia that Billie Holiday sung about decades prior. 

The Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians draw inspiration from New Orleans street bands.

When D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” opened in Boston in 1915, it was greeted by extensive rioting. The film, adapted from Thomas Dixon Jr.’s novel “The Clansmen: An Historical [sic]...