Last Tuesday (Nov. 12), the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail officially launched Sidewalk Stories, a series of trail markers highlighting historic women at the Codman Square branch of the Boston Public Library. 

The stickers, spread out at nine different locations in Dorchester, highlight the lives of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Geraldine Pindell Trotter, Anna Clapp Harris Smith, Toni Bullock, and Rose Pitonof. 

“We originally started to look at how we could put permanent markers in the ground similar to the Freedom Trail. We realized this would cost millions of dollars and be a ten-year project,” said Sam Pardo, a project manager with The Shah Family Foundation, the philanthropic organization incubating the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. [So], we decided to do a temporary marker. My thought was the pandemic’s ‘Six Feet Apart’ stickers. Let’s utilize the idea of them and make them actually enjoyable and beneficial.”

Stickers can be found at the JFK-UMass MBTA station, the Strand Theatre, the Trotter House, the Franklin Park Zoo, the Toni Bullock Funeral Home, Codman Library, the Ashmont MBTA stop, Dorchester Park, and outside Lower Mills Tavern.

Most locations have two stickers, one with a portrait and a quick fact about the woman and another with more details about her life. Each sticker also includes a QR code that can be scanned for additional information. 

“When you click on the QR codes it brings you to a map of Dorchester and you can see the five women and look at the amazing things they did,” Pardo told The Reporter. 

She and the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail board members hope this public art installation will be a fun interactive way to teach neighborhood youth about the generation of women who came before them. 

To get some of the youngest Bostonians involved they invited community members to a preschool story time at Codman Library. 

Here, Pardo read “Baby Feminists,” by Libby Babbott-Klein to the children. She then showed them a sticker portraying Toni Bullock, the youngest Black woman to earn an embalming license in Massachusetts, and asked them if they would help her paste the sticker on the sidewalk outside the library. 

Bullock, with her husband Adolphus, opened a funeral home at 389 Washington St. in 1958. While the building is no longer the Bullock Funeral Home, a sticker has also been placed there. 

“I think you guys are the perfect helpers to help us make history,” said Pardo. “What we’re going to do is we’re going to have some fun and dance and play and after we’re going to take these outside and roll them outside.”

Pardo then invited Sarah Fader from the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre to read “The Nutcracker” to the children. As Fader told the tale, she danced alongside the little ones and library intern Delilah, who attends the Henderson Inclusion School just down the street.

Two-year-old Mark, holding a stuffed animal frog in one hand and Faders in the other, showed off his dance moves while sibling pair Bobby and Lilly twirled scarves in the air. 

As “Waltz of the Flowers” quietly played between bookshelves, the toddlers were reminded that with imaginations like Clara’s, they could do anything they set their minds to and maybe one day sidewalk stickers would be made about them. 

Once the story ended, the children bundled up for the cold windy day and followed Pardo outside, where they were given a sticker roller to help secure the two stickers to the sidewalk. 

“They should last at least 3-5 years, assuming people don’t come peal them up,” said Pardo. “They are made to last through sun, snow, and shoveling.”

Board members Cheryl Brown-Greene, Alma Wright, Mary Howland Smoyer, Meg Campbell, and Laura Pattison watched from the side with smiles. “It’s my hope that [Sidewalk Stories] are going to inspire people to not only research and learn more about the women, but also think that they can and say, ‘This happened right here,’” said Brown-Greene, who has lived in Boston since she was six. 

While many of the children were hearing Bullock’s name for the first time, Brown-Greene knew her personally. “She actually buried my dad,” she said in an interview with The Reporter. 

Fellow board member Wright added that she was excited to see women like Bullock recognized because men typically get all the credit. “I just feel that people really don’t know how much women have helped in Boston. Most of the things you see around are all men.”

Though Nov. 12 marked the launch of the Dorchester series, Sidewalk Stories are soon coming to other neighborhoods, too. 

“We’re trying different things in different neighborhoods. In Dorchester, we did this at a more high-traffic location. In Jamaica Plain, we are doing a very specific, half-mile curated trail,” said Pardo. “Do we get more scans in high-traffic areas or on a purposeful trail? We’re hoping to get results over this winter and then come springtime launch at least four more in whichever way these have worked.”