“History is being erased every day. We have to be creative to counter that.”

TBF: What sparked the initial launch of the Hidden History Fund? 

Bennie Pratt Wiley: It was kind of serendipity in some ways. We were in New York for New Year's Eve, staying with some friends, and we all went to dinner with four or five other couples. Some of the people in New York had seen the new movie Selma, and I happen to have seen the premiere here in Boston. So we were talking about the movie, how powerful it was, and how people didn't know the history, and how kids didn't know their history. And someone said, just off-hand, “Wouldn't it be great if every kid in America could see the movie?” Movies are approachable and can really be better for learning history, and that idea just kind of took off. One of the guys at the dinner sat on the board of Viacom, which was the parent company of Paramount. He went and talked to the powers that be there about the idea, asking, if we raised the money, how would that work? They were very receptive, and said, you raise the money, and all that kids will have to do is show a student ID, and they can get admitted to the movie. That was a big step. New York started raising money, and they said, What about Boston? And I thought, we could try. Actually, one of the first calls I made was to Paul Grogan at the Boston Foundation, because I knew we needed some kind of financial vehicle to raise the money, so it wasn’t coming to me. The Foundation was perfect. I knew they have different funds for specific things. I knew that any donor would have confidence and respect for the Foundation, and it gave greater gravitas and clarity to the effort.

Then I started calling friends. I just started reaching out to different people, and honestly, it was a Friday, and by Monday, we had raised $100,000. It was really amazing. It was at a point in time where there was a lot of frustration in the Black community. Not that it's not there now. But people wanted to do something and weren't really sure what they could do. So it became this tangible thing that could be done to counter the frustration, to do something positive.

We worked with the Foundation and some people from the program department to help identify the students here in Boston and to help coordinate their being able to go to the movie. Kids could go with a family member, but it was typically someone from an organization. It might be an aftercare program, or a schoolwide effort. So the Foundation coordinated that part of it, and we raised about $120,000 in total, and about 11,000 kids were going to see the movie in Boston because of that effort.

Did you also support people seeing Hidden Figures? 

Hidden Figures was a natural next effort. Because it too was about history and around race in ways that our students didn't know. We weren't targeting just Black students. We were saying all students should know this history. When Hidden Figures came out, we still had some money left in our fund, and we raised some more to send students to this film.

So contributing the books about Sarah Roberts to the newly named Sarah Roberts Elementary School seems like a natural progression from that as well. 

Yes. And I have to tell you, I didn't know who Sarah Roberts was. Loren Van Allen from TBF contacted me and said, “I know you have this fund, and I want to tell you about an effort at this school that I think would be so fitting.” So it was an educational experience for me as well to learn who Sarah Roberts was and how she sparked a whole national movement. And the school itself sounds phenomenal. And it's interesting that Charles Sumner—one of the former namesakes of the school—was on the legal team for Sarah Roberts in 1850. So that's a nice continuation.

Getting the lesser-known stories from our history out there to people—young people, but also not young people—feels more important than ever. I’m curious about your thoughts on that?

History is being erased every day. I think we have to be creative to counter that. That's one of the things I really liked about the movie idea at the time, and the Sarah Roberts book sharing, and maybe it's something else in the future. But vehicles that are entertaining enough that people will listen and absorb it, so that they can learn history in a way that is real and memorable. I do worry about the fact that history is being erased. And, when and if we were able to, let’s say, correct or reverse what's going on, what's going to be lost in the process?

Do you have future plans for the Hidden History Fund?

Well, it really was created [in early 2015] to address that singular initiative around Selma. That was really a moment: In the end, initiatives in 32 cities raised more than $2 million, and 300,000–500,000 students saw the movie around the country. Since we had money left here, and since it was at the Boston Foundation, which is in the business of granting funds to worthy organizations, it makes sense to use the Foundation's help to identify other cases. Like providing A First Step to all students in the Sarah Roberts School. We're not doing it on an annual basis but if something came along that seemed to call for it, then we could go back out and fundraise again.