HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! For decades, a 1967 riot that rocked Roxbury’s Grove Hall neighborhood was generally referred to in the mainstream media as a "race riot" or as "the welfare riot," while a handful of articles and books by Black authors called it "the police riot."  A group of mostly African American women who led a group called Mothers for Adequate Welfare were staging a sit-in protest at a welfare office on Blue Hill Avenue. When tensions escalated, the police stormed in and used force to remove the group.  Onlookers were outraged by the violence and attempted to stop the police. The resulting riot spanned three nights in Roxbury, with arson, looting, and shots fired both by and at the police, and the scars it left behind took decades to heal. Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/140

From his Harvard graduation in 1895 to his death in 1934, William Monroe Trotter was one of the most influential and uncompromising advocates for the rights of Black Americans. He was a leader who had the vision to co-found groups like the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, but he also had an ego that prevented him from working effectively within the movements he started. He was a critic of Booker T Washington, and an early ally of Marcus Garvey. Monroe Trotter was the publisher of the influential Black newspaper the Boston Guardian, and he is the subject of a new biography by Tufts Professor Kerri Greenidge called Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter. For show notes, check out http://HUBhistory.com/183

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! “The Birth of a Nation” was one of the most controversial movies ever made, and when it premiered on February 8, 1915 it almost instantly became the greatest blockbuster of the silent movie era. It featured innovative new filmmaking techniques, a revolutionary score, and it was anchored by thrilling action scenes shot on a never-before-seen scale, with thousands of actors and extras, hundreds of horses, and battlefield effects like real cannons. “Birth of a Nation” was apologetically racist, promoting white supremacy and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as the noble, heroic saviors of white America from the villainous clutches of evil black men bent on rape and destruction. Upon the film’s 50th anniversary in 1965, NAACP president Roy Wilkins proclaimed that all the progress that African Americans had made over the past half century couldn’t outweigh the damage done by “Birth of a Nation.” When the film debuted in Boston in April of 1915, audience reaction was split along racial lines, with white Bostonians flocking to see the movie in record numbers, while black Bostonians organized protests and boycotts, with leaders like William Monroe Trotter attempting to have it banned in Boston. Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/121

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! Historian Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, author of Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, joins us this week to talk about the evolution of partisanship and political loyalty among Boston’s African American community, from just after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century. It was a period that at first promised political and economic advancement for African Americans, but ended with the rise of lynching and codified Jim Crow laws. It was also a period that began with near universal support for Lincoln’s Republican party among African Americans, with Frederick Douglass commenting “the Republican party is the ship and all else is the sea.” However, after decades of setbacks and roadblocks on the path of progress, many began to question their support of the GOP, and some tried to forge a new, non-partisan path to Black advancement. Dr. Bergeson-Lockwood will tell us how the movement developed and whether it ultimately achieved its goals. Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/154

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! We’re joined this week by Dr. Jessie Morgan-Owens, who called from New Orleans to discuss her book Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement. Mary was born into slavery in Virginia, the child of an enslaved mother and father. Through the remarkable efforts of her father, the entire family was emancipated when Mary was 7 years old. Shortly thereafter, Mary caught the eye of Senator Charles Sumner. Her complexion was light enough for her to pass as white, making her a powerful political symbol for the abolitionist cause. The books details her life and deep ties to the Boston area. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/157

A little more than three years ago, cohost emerita Nikki and I were on our way to see the Hamilton musical for the first time. In our excitement, we decided to record an episode about an 1806 political duel in Boston that had a lot of parallels with the Hamilton-Burr duel. We dug into the history of dueling in Boston, how dueling laws evolved in response to the duels that were fought here, and why a young Boston Democratic-Republican and a young Boston Federalist decided they had to fight each other to the death in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, we also peppered samples from the Hamilton soundtrack throughout the episode in our excitement, stomping all over Lin Manuel’s intellectual property. The unlicensed music even got the episode pulled from at least one podcast app. This week, I went back to our original recording and re-edited it to clean it up and remove all the Hamiltunes. So get ready to meet Charles Sumner’s dad and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s dad, sail on the USS Constitution, and Alexander Hamilton himself will even put in a brief appearance. Plus, we’ll learn why fighting a duel in Massachusetts could get you buried at a crossroads with a stake driven through your heart. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/216/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! Here are three classic episodes honoring black and white abolitionists in 19th Century Boston. Recorded in February 2017, in the wake of President Trump’s attempt to implement a “Muslim Ban,” these episodes focus on Boston’s resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, which was seen as an unjust law. They're from very early in our podcasting career, so please forgive how rough they are around the edges. Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/067

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month. When five year old Sarah Roberts was turned away from the schoolhouse door in Boston simply because of the color of her skin, her father sued the city in an attempt to force the public schools to desegregate, in compliance with a state law that had been intended to do just that years before. Unfortunately, the suit was unsuccessful. Not only did the Boston schools remain segregated, but the court’s decision provided the legal framework of “separate but equal,” which would be used to justify segregated schools across the country for a century to come. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/162

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US in 1864, and she spent most of her adult life in Charlestown, Beacon Hill, and the Readville section of Hyde Park. She devoted her career to pediatrics and obstetrics, published the first medical text by an African American author, and made a point of caring for the marginalized, even moving to Virginia to tend to formerly enslaved people at the end of the Civil War. The nation’s first Black female physician lay in an unmarked grave for 125 years, but there have been important developments in the story of Dr. Crumpler while we’ve been in quarantine this year. Double Bonus: February 8, 2021 is Dr. Crumpler's 190th birthday, and the mayor has proclaimed it to be Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler Day in the City of Boston. Huzzah! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/200

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! This week we’re revisiting two classic episodes to highlight injustice in how the death penalty has been applied in our city’s history. First, we’re going to visit early Boston, in a time when execution by hanging was a shockingly common sentence for everything from murder and piracy to witchcraft and Quakerdom. During this period, hanging was the usual, and execution by fire was decidedly unusual. This punishment was reserved only for members of one race and one sex, and in Boston’s history, only two enslaved African American women were burned at the stake. After that, we’ll fast forward to the mid-19th century, when it seemed like the death penalty would soon be abolished. After 13 years without an execution in Boston, a black sailor was convicted of first degree murder. Despite the fact that white men convicted in similar circumstances were sentenced to life in prison, he was condemned to death. And despite tens of thousands of signatures on petitions for clemency, he was hanged at Leverett Street Jail in May of 1849. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/182

For Black History Month, we're dropping some of our favorite past episodes back into the podcast feed every few days this month. Enjoy! The Boston slave trade began when a ship arrived in the harbor in the summer of 1638 carrying a cargo of enslaved Africans, but there was already a history of slave ownership in the new colony. After this early experience, Massachusetts would continue to be a slave owning colony for almost 150 years. In this week’s episode, we discuss the origins of African slavery in Massachusetts and compare the experience of enslaved Africans to other forms of unfree labor in Boston, such as enslaved Native Americans, Scottish prisoners of war, and indentured servants. Warning: This week’s episode uses some of the racialized language of our 17th and 18th century sources, and it describes an act of sexual violence. Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/074

They stockpiled guns and ammunition. They built homemade bombs. They had a hit list of a dozen members of Congress who were targeted for assassination. They believed themselves to be patriots, with soldiers and police officers among their ranks. They rallied under the motto of America First, but they planned to overthrow our Constitutional government and install a fascist dictatorship. Believe it or not, I’m not talking about the insurrection on January 6, 2021, but instead a plot that the FBI uncovered in January 1940. The subsequent investigation threw a spotlight on a group called the Christian Front that made its headquarters at Boston’s Copley Plaza hotel, promoting violent attacks on Jewish Bostonians while accepting covert funding and support from a Nazi spymaster who flew the swastika proudly from his home on Beacon Hill. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/215/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

The first commercially viable telephone network was created by a Boston inventor and entrepreneur. Not Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with inventing the telephone, but Edwin Thomas Holmes. Starting in the 1850s, his father Edwin Holmes created the first burglar alarm company here in Boston, then Edwin Thomas Holmes adapted the alarm company’s network of telegraph wires in the 1870s to work with the telephone switchboard he invented. Working with Alexander Graham Bell, the Holmes company turned his invention into a business and helped him build the Bell Telephone Company. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/214/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

In November 1718, a tragedy on Boston Harbor cut short the lives of six people, including the first keeper of Boston Light and four members of his household. To find out what happened that morning, we’re going to look at what Boston Harbor was like before the construction of Boston Light, why Boston Harbor needed a lighthouse, how it got built, and who was chosen as the first keeper. We’ll also look at the founding father who was moved to poetry by the tragedy, as well as the centuries long search for Ben Franklin’s lost verses and a 20th century hoax that got repeated as truth. Then we’ll close out the show with a quick look at the present and future of Boston Light on Little Brewster Island. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/213 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory

The Puritan dissenters who founded the town of Boston are remembered as a deeply religious society, so you might think that Christmas in Puritan Boston would be a big deal. You’d be wrong though. Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more. What were the Puritans’ theological misgivings about Christmas? What were the practices of misrule, mummery, and wassailing with which Christmas was celebrated in the 17th century? And why did the Puritans literally erase Christmas from their calendars? Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/212 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory