We take for granted the plot of land at the center of Boston, Massachusetts. It’s simply “the Common,” visited by Bostonians and tourists alike. But what is a “common,” how did Boston come to have one, and whose land is it, anyway?

Watch this recording of an engaging, informative and original presentation about the Boston Common by Professor Robert Allison, chair of the history department at Suffolk University, president of the Colonial Society, and author of multiple books. It’s a piece of land at the heart of one of colonial America’s oldest city, home to cows, sheep, militia practice, hanging trees - and, as the Shawmut peninsula of the Massachusett Tribe, someone else’s land.

Enjoy the fourth lecture in our 2021 fall series, The Common Good: Whose Common, Whose Good? as we look at how people of the 17th century addressed questions of the public good versus the individual and differing ideas of community.