It may be difficult to imagine that a consequential black electoral politics evolved in the United States before the Civil War, for as of 1860, the overwhelming majority of African Americans remained in bondage. Yet free black men, many of them escaped slaves, steadily increased their influence in electoral politics over the course of the early American republic. Despite efforts to disenfranchise them, black men voted across much of the North, sometimes in numbers sufficient to swing elections. Van Gosse offers a sweeping reappraisal of the formative era of American democracy from the Constitution's ratification through Abraham Lincoln’s election, chronicling the rise of an organized, visible black politics focused on the quest for citizenship, the vote, and power within the free states.

In the 1980s, Massachusetts embraced the War on Drugs, enacting harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. It took decades to confront the reality that, in addition to being ineffective and costly, mandatory minimums resulted in the pervasive and disproportionate incarceration of Black and Brown people. Panelists will discuss this troubling history, recent reforms, and the prospects for implementing drug policies that are effective, fair, and just.

Moderator:

Hon. Sydney Hanlon, Massachusetts Appeals Court

Speaker:

Sen. William N. Brownsberger, Second Suffolk & Middlesex District; Abrigal Forrester, Executive Director, Center for Teen Empowerment; Rahsaan D. Hall, Director of the Racial Justice Program, American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts; Deborah A. Ramirez, Professor, Northeastern University School of Law

Developed by the Northeastern University School of Law Criminal Justice Task Force, Confronting Racial Injustice is a free, five-part series hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society and sponsored by a number of Boston-area organizations.

When we talk about patriotism in America, we tend to mean one form: the version captured in shared celebrations like the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance. But as Ben Railton argues, that celebratory patriotism is just one of four distinct forms: celebratory, the communal expression of an idealized America; mythic, the creation of national myths that exclude certain communities; active, acts of service and sacrifice for the nation; and critical, arguments for how the nation has fallen short of its ideals that seek to move us toward that more perfect union. In Of Thee I Sing, Railton defines those four forms of American patriotism, using the four verses of “America the Beautiful” as examples of each type, and traces them across our histories.

In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad had made history by linking East and West.  Relying heavily on federal grants, it left an opening for two brash new railroad men, the Civil War hero behind the Rio Grande and the corporate chieftain of the Santa Fe, to build the first transcontinental to make money, bringing to life such out-of-the-way places as San Diego, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Denver, and Los Angeles. Remarkably, it transformed Boston, too. An early railroad hub, Boston was a major financial hub for Western expansion. Backers of that first transcontinental, the Union Pacific, Bostonians also back the Santa Fe in its quest to be the second. Its corporate headquarters were on Boston's Dvonshire Street, and its board drawn from the city's moneyed elite, providing a local angle to this epic story of the greatest railroad war of all time

This panel will look at the grassroots LGBT periodicals that originated in Boston during the modern gay liberation era and evolved to become critical resources for LGBT communities all over the country. How did these magazines, journals, and newsletters influence and inform self-identity, politics, and activism nation-wide? What kind of ideological debates played out in the pages of these publications? We will try to understand why Boston was a particularly good incubator for this particular type of activist media, while also examining how these periodicals worked to amplify the unique concerns and demands of LGBT communities nationally.

Charles Stuart, a white man, murdered his wife and unborn child in Boston in 1989 and falsely blamed the attack on a nonexistent Black man. Believing Stuart’s lie, the police engaged in a massive manhunt that terrorized a Black community in Mission Hill with detention, public strip-searches, and the arrest of two innocent men. As some lawmakers demanded the death penalty, the media perpetuated this false story. The Stuart case exemplifies how the narrative of white supremacy continues to lead to the dehumanization and devaluation of Black lives. Widespread acceptance of white lies over Black lives persists today.

Developed by the Northeastern University School of Law Criminal Justice Task Force, Confronting Racial Injustice is a free, five-part series hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society and sponsored by a number of Boston-area organizations.

For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. The Education Trap delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, using the city of Boston as a test case. Even as Boston spent heavily on public schools the first decades of the twentieth century,  the shift to more educated labor had negative consequences—both intended and unintended—for many workers. Employers supported training in schools in order to undermine the influence of craft unions, shifting workplace power toward management. Advanced educational credentials became a means of controlling access to high-paying professional and business jobs, concentrating power and wealth. Formal education thus became a central force in maintaining inequality.

From a small expanse of land on the North American continent came four of the nation's first five presidents—a geographic dynasty whose members led a revolution, created a nation, and ultimately changed the world. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were friends and rivals, they led in securing independence, hammering out the United States Constitution, and building a working republic. But even as Virginians advanced Enlightenment values like  liberty, equality, and human possibility, they held people in slavery and were slaveholders when they died. Taking full measure of strengths and failures in the personal as well as the political lives of the men of the Virginia Dynasty, Cheney offers a concise and original exploration of how the United States came to be.