Throughout “Love Story,” viewers can glimpse Cambridge before urban renewal, cellphones and personal computers, and much of the film’s visual honesty comes from director Arthur Hiller’s portrayal of star-crossed lovers’ newlywed life in the Agassiz neighborhood (before gentrification).

History Cambridge hosted Harvard and Simmons educators at History Cafés in the spring exploring the history of the city’s Black community, including abolitionist Harriet Jacobs, who ran boarding houses in the city, and threads of the Black experience through the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

The first mention of slavery in Cambridge is from 1639, in a reference to a “Moor” living in the household of Nathaniel Eaton, master of Harvard College. By the 1770s, several of the wealthiest residents of Brattle Street (otherwise known as Tory Row) held multiple people in bondage.

The lineage of formerly enslaved people in Cambridge and their contributions to African American history may begin in the 18th and 19th centuries, but they continue to shape the city and the wider metropolitan area.

There was a moment when a one-of-a-kind personality brightened our streets, parks and squares with his presence – a bard whose lyrical musings came wrapped with musical sounds and a simple message of love for nature, life and one another. His name was Brother Blue.

In his own recounting of his historic April 18, 1775 ride, Paul Revere uses the body of an enslaved person as a landmark. To today’s reader, the reference is likely shocking.

“Cambridge Love Letters” – to people, places and the city itself – take the stage Tuesday at Starlight Square, featuring letters past and present, drawn from the attics and basements and long-kept diaries of Cambridge lovers just like you.

This Memorial Day, people will observe or not observe the holiday as they see fit. The Black veterans of Cambridge’s Isaac Wilson Taylor Post should be remembered and thanked for their courageous service.

Big changes are coming to the Cambridge Historical Society – so big that you’ll begin to see it in a whole new light, starting with the most fundamental of things: its name.

Benjamin F. Olken partially financed his MIT engineering degree by swapping or selling secondhand goods. After graduation in the 1930s, Olken began a tiny bicycle rental business – and by the 1970s was catering to a booming market with rentals (tandems extra), sales, maps and touring guidance.