Modern Boston History Class Exam 2

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Week 3.1 World War I and the 1920s History 385

Julie de Chantal

This lecture might feel a little disconnected. There are a lot of pieces moving simultaneously which I will try to discuss along the way. There is a lot to cover, and I will try to streamline the materials.

Dramatic transformation of the state’s population From 1900 to 1919, the state’s economy was bustling and vigorous. The industrial productivity lured newcomers seeking work. Massachusetts was 3rd in manufacturing employment in the nation, and jobs were plentiful.

Between 1890 and 1914, 1 million immigrants arrived in the state. As a result, Yankees were now the minority both in the state and in Boston. By the end of 1920, less than ⅓ of the laboring men were native born children of native-born parents. Immigrants and children of immigrants accounted for 66.8% of the Bay State’s population.

Boston’s population In addition to the transformation of the demographic make up of the city, Boston’s population increased tremendously in the last half of the nineteenth century. Boston’s population grew from 136,000 people in 1850 to more than 500,000 in 1900. By 1900, Boston is considered a metropolis (i.e. a large city which is a significant political, economic, and cultural role for a region). At the time, more than a million people live in the 31 towns and cities within a 10 mile radius of the Boston Common.

Because of the demand for land, Bostonians filled the waters of the harbor and adjacent rivers to create more land. Around that period, they finished filling the South End, and the Back Bay as we know them today. The city extended older neighborhoods of South Boston, Charlestown, East Boston, and the Fenway. (see 1916 map).

By the end of the 19th century, the city completed the annexation of other towns as neighborhoods

• Roxbury in 1868 • Dorchester in 1870 • West Roxbury in 1874 • Brighton in 1874

From 5 square miles in 1850, the city at the turn of the century expanded to thirty-nine square miles.

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Typical city By 1900, Boston was a typical metropolis of the twentieth century. Its commercial central business district was surrounded by adjoining factory and warehouse areas and an inner city of small business and low income residences, which in turn abutted more affluent neighborhoods. All of these areas were ringed by middle and upper-income suburbs.

The vast majority of poor people in the city were newcomers. The 1920 census showed that 73% of the total population in the city were immigrants or native-born children of immigrants.

At the turn of the century, as I mentioned last week, there was a deep change in the migration. Whereas most of the immigration in the 19th century was the “old immigration” coming from Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany, and Canada, immigrants coming at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century came from other locations.

The New immigration: • Southern Europe (Italy, Portugal, Greece) • Eastern Europe (Russian and Ukrainian Jews as well as Catholic and Jews from

Poland).

In 1920 the city population of Boston was as follows: • 32% Irish • 16% Jews • 14% Italians • 2% Black • 36% Yankee and other immigrants

As we discussed last week, it was still difficult for migrants to achieve prosperity, and it usually took 2 to 3 generations for immigrants to become part of the middle-class.

Theory of the Last Immigrants Historians and sociologists name this pattern the “Theory of the Last Immigrants.” The theory goes like this: when the immigrants arrived in a new country, they took a place at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. They usually lived in the inner city and had blue collar jobs. Within 2 or 3 generations, they became more prosperous and moved to better neighborhoods, usually further from the center of the city. Their children benefited from this prosperity, usually gained access to college, found white collar or prestigious jobs (doctor, lawyer, etc), and became middle-class. These children moved again toward better neighborhoods, usually toward the suburbs. As the first and second generation moved out of their neighborhood, new migrants took over their apartment, starting a new cycle of their own.

In Boston, this theory works to a certain extent. Despite the fact that Jews were the last immigrants, a large number of them did remarkably well in the city from their arrival on. This was often linked to their status in their country of origin, their profession, and the fact that the

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community was self-sustaining once established in the city. Italians and Irish, the two Catholic groups in the city at that time, lagged behind. When they finally climbed the ladder, they usually got into what we can consider menial white-collar employment (low ranking office jobs for example). By 1900, new comers still faced some job shortage and discrimination, they lived in congested neighborhoods, and experienced poor living conditions.

Immigrants enter the public sphere In 1902 and again in 1912, poor Jewish immigrants rioted in the streets. Although I mentioned that Jews did better than other immigrant groups, recent immigrants struggled. They lived in a densely packed area in the West End (we can call it a ghetto considering how densely packed the area was and how poor the residents were). In 1902 and in the same way, in 1912, the price of Kosher meat rose tremendously. Both times, Yiddish speaking mothers took to the streets to protest the high prices. These protests were on par with the European food riots where the peasants or village people rose up against the decisions of merchants.

At the time, Solomont and Sons had the monopoly of kosher meat in the city, so they could rise the prices as much as they wanted. On May 21, 1902, thousands of women gathered in the streets around the stores. They had no leaders but came together at the same time. At one location, one man purchased meat. One of the women saw him, snatched his package, and slapped him in the face with it. She then threw the meant into the street and stomped on it. Crowds of thousands which included men and boys joined them. They harassed the customers, and refused to let them leave the stores. The police arrived, tried to calm the situation, but became the target of the crowds. The confrontation escalated. The officers arrested 13 for loitering, two for breaking glass, and one for assault. The following day was a Friday, and the beginning of Sabbath. Rioters dispersed. Some continued informal picketing but there was no further violence.

Unfortunately, the prices did not go down and the issues continued in the community. In 1912, higher price for kosher beef led to more picketing and boycotts in the West End. Violence broke out on June 24, when many small riots occurred. Women surrounded butcher shops, broke windows, and attacked customers. A newspaper reported that “it was not infrequent to see chickens hurtling through the air or to see women and boys derisively waving a chicken leg or a piece or torn meat in the faces of persons not in favor of the boycott.” Rioters then invaded shops that remained opened, pulled meat products off the shelves, and threw them into the street where others danced upon them. Again the police intervened, tried to scatter the crowds, but they kept on reforming.

One aspect that is really important from this is that instead of stealing the food, as they could have done, they destroyed it. Anyone who was carrying a “suspicious package” was targeted by the rioters. More than a thousand women stormed the Rosenberg Store, beating the owners. Ultimately, the riot was successful in closing all of the kosher meat stores of the West End. Once that happened, the rioters moved to attack kosher meat shops in the North End. Police eventually made 8 arrests and the boycott faded within a few days. However, a number of women kept the

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heat up for the butchers. They organized a committee of women to continue lobbying for lower prices. Over all, they had very little success. So by 1914, there was a lot of discontent in the city.

Context of the War In this section, I will give you an overview of the conflict. I will then show you the problems experienced in the city. The war began in Europe after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary.

The war began because of a number of issues: • secret alliances between countries (this is why so many countries became involved in

the war) • Rise of militarism • Rise of Nationalisms • Imperialism and the desire to keep colonies

Neutrality United States remained neutral at the beginning of the war. They did so because of the division among the American people vis à vis the war. Germans opposed fighting against their own country. The Irish opposed the war since they did not want to side with Great Britain. Ireland was still fighting for its independence at the time. Socialists and Progressive reformers saw the war as an imperialist war and one driven by capitalism hence also opposed it. Some Socialists and reformers were also anti-war or peace activists, hence they opposed the entry into any military conflict. African Americans were ambivalent. Some opposed the war due to the hypocrisy of fighting tyranny abroad while Jim Crow was still omnipresent in the country. Others felt that the war could be a good way to prove their loyalty and their worth as human beings.

Neutrality, in this sense, made sense as it helped preserve a relative harmony in the country. As a neutral power, the United States could continue commercial alliances with both sides, but slowly reoriented their commercial ventures toward the Allies (Britain, France, and Russia) since Britain created a blockade to the Central Powers (German, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire). Furthermore, German’s unrestricted submarine warfare made it impossible for the United States to continue their commercial dealings with the Central Powers.

Unrestricted Submarine Warfare During the war, Germany used the U-Boats to conduct unrestricted warfare. For a city like Boston which has access to the ocean and which depends on its port for its survival, this is a difficult moment. Bostonians lived their daily life in the uncertainty of an attack.

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Declaration of War After the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman telegram, Wilson did not have a choice but to declare war against Germany. Following the declaration of war, in April 1917, there were several clashes in Boston. On July 1st, pacifists and socialists were victims of attacks in the city as they held a peace parade on the Boston Common. Angry mobs, led by servicemen, assaulted the paraders. The police who was supposed to support the protesters ended up beating them instead. The riot, which assembled some 20,000 people, and lasted for more than 4 hours. Rioters were motivated by patriotism. They ignored the minority’s legal rights to protest and to free speech under the First Amendment. The activists had invoked their First Amendment right to protest, had received their parade permit, and had gathered outside of the Common. As soon as they saw the parade, the servicemen attacked the participants.

Migration to the city + Great migration Between 1915 and 1930, 1 million African Americans migrated North to find better job opportunities. The migration started in 1915 for several reasons:

• It was the nadir of race relations in the South (look up the word if you are not sure what nadir means!)

• There was a decrease of immigration due to the war in Europe. As a result, there were less immigrants to fill up positions in the industries.

• Industrialization in the North and Midwest, and the shift toward the war industry required more workers than expected.

In addition to the drop in immigration, the fact that men enrolled in the military after 1917 left many jobs open. Since all of the white able men were either employed or going to the war, Black workers were hired as a last resort. (Don’t forget that the North is still racist and that employers only hired Black workers when they did not have another choice).

The migration led to difficulties in race relations. Violence against African Americans increased across the North and the Midwest. Lynching and attempted lynchings, which had been common in the South, became more common in the North.

Birth of a Nation Movie The rise of anti-Black sentiment increased with the release of the movie The Birth of a Nation in 1915. In order to really understand why, you have to remember that the 1910s were really the beginning of the cinema industry and that people were obsessed with the new productions. At the time, David W. Griffith’s movie was a masterpiece in terms of the story (longest ever produced the film was 3 hours long, presented in 2 parts with an intermission. It required 12 reels for its presentation.), its special effects (engineers from West Point provided technical advice on the battles and provided Griffith with the weapons to use during the movie.), and the music during the film was as revolutionary (it was works of classical composers, new arrangements of well- known melodies, and original compositions). (The films technical merits do not compensate for the problems of the story!)

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The movie was based on the novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, and chronicles the history of two families (the pro-union Northerners Stonemans, and the pro-Confederacy Southerners Camerons) during the Civil War and the Reconstruction.

Because of its endorsement from President Wilson (a historian), the movie presented the story as if it were historical reality. It even showed a small clip with a quote by Wilson saying that it was the true history of the period. It is important to remember that Wilson was from Virginia. His family identified with the South and supported the Confederacy during the war.

Controversy around the movie As soon as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) heard that the movie was coming out, they began protesting. They asked for the censorship of the production nationwide. The protest in Boston was particularly vicious.

The elite, via the NAACP and William Monroe Trotter’s National Equal Rights League, launched a campaign to ban Griffith’s production. At first, the Board of Aldermen did not support their plea. They turned toward the Irish Mayor, James Michael Curley, to declare a city- wide ban to avoid a worsening of the already difficult race relations in Boston

James Michael Curley (1874-1958) Curley was born in Roxbury. His father was from Ireland. He met Curley’s mother in Boston (she was from the same area in Ireland). Curley’s father worked as a day laborer and foot soldier for ward boss P. James “Pea Jacket” Maguire. (A ward boss is the leader of a local political machine). Curley’s father died when James was 10. James and his brother John started working to supplement the meager family income. Curley left school as soon as he was able to at age 15, and worked in factories (if you remember I told you about his experience as a piano factory worker).

He tried to take the civil service exam to become a firefighter but he was too young to take the job. During his youth, his mother tried to pull him away from his father’s unsavory associates. As an adult, Curley became more involved in the Catholic Church and in the Ancient Order of Hibernians. He acquired a reputation as a hustler who was willing to help others get ahead. His entrance into politics included the traditional practice of ward politics such as knocking on doors, drumming up votes, and taking complaints for the Democratic party. He first ran for the city common council in 1897 and 1898, failing to make the cutoff for a Democratic nomination in ward caucuses each year. He claimed that, because he was working outside of political machines, he was denied victory by corrupt counting of the votes. He proved his point by winning in 1899 after joining the machine of Charles I. Quirk. He won to the state legislature in 1901. He established the Tammanny Club ( as a wink to the Tammany hall in New York) as a platform for his personal political activities.

In his first two years on the common council, Curley placed roughly 700 people into what were essentially patronage positions, despite the law preventing patronage at the city level. He was

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elected as part of the Board of Aldermen in 1904, while in prison on a fraud conviction. He and a friend had taken the civil service exam for two people of their neighborhood but got caught. That helped his reputation as someone who takes all measures to help friends. In 1910, while an alderman, he ran for U.S. Congress, but what he really wanted was to become mayor. He was elected mayor in 1914-1918. It will be the first of 4, 4 year terms (1914-1918, 1922-1926, 1930-1934, 1946-1950).

Back to the Birth of a Nation In February 1915, the NAACP leadership (at the national level) requested a private viewing in front of the National Board of Censorship to make a case against the movie. In doing so, they hoped to voice their opinion and to secure a ban at the national level. Following the viewing, only a few members were invited to the General Committee meeting. The NAACP had hoped that the Central Committee would support its efforts and requests. However, the Board of Censorship offered a disappointing compromise. It only requested that Griffith cut some scenes, deemed obscene, from the final production.

In March 1915, upon learning that the movie was scheduled to show at the Tremont Theater, Boston’s activists doubled their efforts to ensure that Griffith’s film would not be allowed in the city. The movie was scheduled to première on the fiftieth anniversary of the surrender in Appomattox, on April 9, 1915. The local chapter of the NAACP and Trotter’s National Equal Rights League, lobbied and planned legal actions to force the mayor to censor the movie. On April 7th, several hundreds members of the Black community attended a public hearing at the mayor’s office. On the 9th, the mayor James Michael Curley allowed the movie to screen, upon Griffith’s promise to cut any scenes “which the Mayor deemed objectionable.” After deliberations with the City Censor and the Police Commissioner, Curley concluded that the film was neither “obscene or immoral” and that it did not “injure the morals of the community.” The first public showing in Boston was presented in front of a full house, with Griffith in attendance. Contrary to the hostile reaction that he expected, the producer received a warm ovation. “As a work of art,” a reporter from the Globe argued, “it is so wonderful and so beautiful, and so full of life that it robs one of the power of criticism.”

That was exactly why Boston civil rights organizations wanted to have the movie banned. The theater had hired actors to create an immersive experience. From the attendant retrieving the tickets to the people handing the programs, from the ushers to the Union and Confederate soldiers entertaining the patrons, all of the theater’s employees were dressed in 1860s fashion, and behaved following the norms of the time. The Black leadership did not fear that the movie was a historical fallacy or that it was an unfair rendition. Instead it resided in the fact that the movie could “incite race hatred,” if not censored. First African American appointed as United States Assistant Attorney General, William H. Lewis, a long time Boston resident, felt that the movie was Hollywood’s way of “justify[ing] the Southern program for future lynching,” and of gaining “the approval of the white people of the North. He warned Bostonians that, if they “let them go on” by presenting the movie without any censorship, the community should “not be

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surprised to see lynching of colored men on Boston Common,” a prophecy which almost materialized in 1920.

On Saturday, April 17th, at 6 pm, a receptionist at the Boston Globe received a strange call. A Black woman called the office to request that a reporter be sent to the Tremont Theater. The woman allegedly told the receptionist that, “there might be something interesting happen[sic]” at the theater. Given the volatile atmosphere and the lengthy protests that the city had seen in the previous days, the theater had taken the precaution to request the help of police officers to maintain order. Two hundred and sixty officers were dispatched, 200 stayed on the street, while 60 officers, in plain clothes, entered the premises. Commissioner Stephen O'Meara had requested an additional hundred officers to work at the Lagrane Street station, where protesters would be sent, following their arrest, to support their colleagues.

At 7 o’clock, a group of African American and white protesters gathered on Tremont street. According to the Globe, the management had heard that, the previous night, the group had planned to fill the theater with their supporters, then to “seize and destroy the films, which [were] kept in the operating box at the back of the orchestra.” As soon as the employees heard of the crowd’s arrival, they closed the box office. Only those who had pre-ordered or had already bought their tickets were admitted to the showing. The theater asked the protesters to leave but they refused. William Monroe Trotter recalled seeing a man purchasing three tickets, waving them in the air, and addressing the crowd, confirming that the protesters were facing discrimination. “I’ve got three” said the man, “and if you want me to get more, I’ll do it.”

As soon as Trotter accused the management of racial discrimination, the situation became explosive. Trotter was struck to the jaw by a police officers in plain clothes. Accusations started flowing. The crowd felt very “uneasy.” The officers attempted to disperse the protesters in vain. “From 7:30, when the trouble began, until after 11:30,” reports the Globe, “they stood about there by the thousands, defying the efforts of the officers to make them ‘move on.’” Police officers arrested a total of eleven people. Among the detainees were two women and nine men, including Reverend Aaron W. Puller, of the People’s Baptist Church, and William Monroe Trotter. The next day, 1000 men and women crowded in Faneuil Hall, and 500 more gathered outside.

From that point on, there was not much progress. Following the meeting, leaders decided that anyone who could should show up at the Governor’s office the next day to present a petition. Several hundred did. (It was both a Black and white crowd). Despite the fact that the governor promised action, only a few scenes were cut. In the following day, 800 women protested the movie, nothing happened.

It was basically a “hot potato” game where every single official who could possibly do something tossed the ball to someone else. Butler Wilson who was a NAACP activist, sadly concluded that, “when we go to the Mayor of Boston, we are chloroformed by promises.” He then added that when they appealed to the Police Commissioner, they were also told that “he

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[too] was lacking in authority.” Despite all of their efforts, the film was never censored. What is most important though, is that, as predicted, the movie led to the rise in violence against African Americans and to the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan.

Rise of the Second KKK Not long after the release of the production, a second KKK rose in strength. As we discussed the first Ku Klux Klan emerged after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction. It was a Southern entity attempting to restore white supremacy after the emancipation. The second KKK was a national phenomenon, and was especially popular in the North and in the Midwest. It had its largest number of followers in Indiana, due to the Great Migration in industrial areas.

In Massachusetts, the Athol Klan chapter was the largest. Smith College had its own lady auxiliary chapter.

The Klan is also in Boston. The second Klan expand the reach of its hatred. Instead of being only anti-Black, it was an all-around nativist organization. It was anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant, and supported prohibition. As you can see, it made sense for the city to have its own chapter.

However, here is the interesting thing about the movement in Boston. The Boston chapter of the Klan did not attract the populace like in other locations (remember that most of the working- class is immigrant and Catholic in the city). Instead, the Boston Klan was one of the few “hidden” chapters because most of its members were part of the intelligentsia of the city. In this case, we are talking about the upper-middle class Yankee for the most part.

Because people know that it was a despicable organization, they did not want to be associated with the movement. However, they still wanted to find a safe space to talk about their hatred of the immigrant.

Nativism rise after 1915 As you can imagine, the movement was a factor in the rise of a nativist feeling once again after 1915. We will discuss this in a few minutes.

Boston in the War Let’s go back to the war. As soon as it declared the war, the federal government instituted a draft. The Selective Service Act of 1917 drafted men in three waves

• The first, on June 5, 1917, was for all men between the ages of 21 and 31. • The second, on June 5, 1918, registered those who attained age 21 after June 5, 1917.

A supplemental registration, included in the second registration, was held on August 24, 1918, for those becoming 21 years old after June 5, 1918.

• The third registration was held on September 12, 1918, for men age 18 through 45.

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It classified men into 5 different classes which determined if they were apt and available for service or not.

• Eligible and liable for military service: Unmarried registrants with no dependents, married registrants with independent spouse and/or one or more dependent children over 16 with sufficient family income if drafted.

• Temporarily deferred, but available for military service: Married registrants with dependent spouse and/or dependent children under 16 with sufficient family income if drafted.

• Temporarily exempted, but available for military service: Local officials, registrants who provide sole family income for dependent parents and / or dependent siblings under 16, registrants employed in agricultural labor or industrial enterprises essential to the war effort.

• Exempted due to extreme hardship: Married registrants with dependent spouse and / or dependent children with insufficient family income if drafted, registrants with deceased spouse who provide sole family income for dependent children under 16, registrants with deceased parents who provide sole family income for dependent siblings under 16.

• Exempted or ineligible for induction into military service: State or Federal officials, officers and enlisted men in the military or naval service of the United States (technically, they are already in the military), Licensed pilots employed in the pursuit of their vocation, Members of the clergy, Students who on or before May 18, 1917 had been preparing for the ministry in a recognized theological or divinity school, Registrants who were deemed either medically disabled (permanently physically and / or mentally unfit) or "morally unfit" for military service, registrants shown to have been convicted of any crime designated as treason or felony, or an “infamous” crime, enemy aliens and resident aliens.

There was a lot of talk as to why a number of men did not receive exemptions. The draft was also racialized. They clipped the corners of the draft cards when Black men enlisted, and many Black men did not receive exemptions despite the fact that a large number were eligible.

Recruitment As with the Civil War, Massachusetts participated actively in the war. In particular, the state sent the 26th Infantry Division also nicknamed the Yankee Division to the war. The division activated in Boston on August 22, 1917, and commanded two brigades comprising National Guard units from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine. The division spent 201 days in combat as part of the American Expeditionary Forces. They were particularly involved in combat in France where they landed on September 21, 1917. It was the second division to arrive on the Western Front, with the first division only arriving in June. As soon as they arrived in France, they were sent to Neufchâteau where they trained. (Most of the men recruited for the division were new to the service). Once their training completed, the division participated in several assaults (remember that the First World War is a trench war so there is little action going on at the time).

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Black men recruited One of the difficulties of the First World War is the fact that the military is still segregated. At the time, Black men were recruited in large numbers but could not join the ranks of regular divisions (just like in the Civil War). As a result, Black men were trained at Camp Devens in Massachusetts. They brought in soldiers from the South to train in Massachusetts. (1918 was a particularly bad winter and several newspaper articles in the Boston Globe about how much of a struggle the soldiers from Atlanta went through at the time of a large blizzard that paralyzed the state. They could not deal with the cold)

Most of Massachusetts Black soldiers were part of the 372nd Infantry Regiment, which was under the 93rd division (segregated). Most stayed stateside, offering administrative services to the forces possibly due to their literacy levels. If the soldiers were deployed, they were deployed with the colonial forces, under the pretext that only colonial officers could maintain control over Black soldiers (same racism that we saw in the Civil War). They had to fight like Robert Gould Shaw had to fight to legitimize their regiment.

The history of the Regiment is fascinating. Those who served abroad fought against the Moroccan Division, had a small number of casualties at first, but suffered more later. They also fought in France

Question of Morality during the war There was a true concern about the morality of the soldiers, stateside and abroad during the war. The Department of War and the Department of the Navy (The Department of Defense is only created in 1947) rallied organizations such as the YWCA, YMCA, the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army, or even the Red Cross to provide wholesome entertainment to the soldiers. The idea was to pull men away from the temptation to find prostitutes by providing them with activities (remember that most men in the military are young men). Morality work during the war is segregated. In Boston, different organizations in the Black community worked for morality along socio-economic lines. The elite had an organization for their soldiers, while the working- class offered the same services to their soldiers. They both provided the exact same services provided by the white organizations in the city.

Food shortages and riots in Boston Stateside, 1917 and 1918 were particularly difficult. Winters were particularly bad, cutting the city off from other areas in the nation. Since Boston depended on food sources located outside of the city, the threat of imminent food shortages worried to Roxbury’s and South End’s families. In 1917, a typical family living in Boston spent approximately 45% of its annual income on food, nearly 7% above than the national average. In early 1917, the prices kept rising. Staples such as onions, carrots, potatoes, or beans, let alone meat, already strained working-class families’ budget. Families not only grew hungry but also impatient. In 1917, food riots erupted in New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Protests also became a common occurrence in Boston as mothers from all backgrounds came together to voice their concerns about food shortages.

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Unsurprisingly, newly-established Eastern European Jews and working-class African Americans, whose incomes were lower, took the lead in protesting against food shortages and price increases. In 1917, as a response to the situation, the Boston NAACP, through the Industrial Opportunity Committee, created a food cooperative in an attempt to alleviate the problem. They used the purchasing power of small merchants, bought in bulk, and allowed the community to get a share of the discount. Not long after the creation of the food coop, they began using the cooperative model for all types of institutions (credit unions, child care services, insurance companies, etc).

Spanish Flu The 1918 flu pandemic complicated the already difficult climate. The flu infected over 500 million people worldwide, even in remote places such as the arctic or in some really remote Pacific Islands. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history, killing 3 to 5% of the total earth population (50-100 million dying of the disease). (If you have ever caught the flu, not just a cold, the real flu, you know the “I am dying” feeling that comes with the disease!) Although we cannot pinpoint the origin of the epidemic (i.e. patient 0), the first reports came from Germany, Britain, France, Spain, and the United States. It is highly possible that the spread came from the demobilization of the soldiers.

In the United States, the first confirmed outbreak was reported on March 11, 1918 as taking place at Camp Funston in Kansas, where troops were training for the war. Dr. C. Hannoun, leading expert of the 1918 flu for the Institut Pasteur, asserted the former virus was likely to have come from China, mutating in the United States near Boston and spreading to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, Europe, and the world using Allied soldiers and sailors as main spreaders. In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France; in Freetown, Sierra Leone; and in the U.S. in Boston, Massachusetts.The Spanish Flu also spread through Ireland, carried there by returning Irish soldiers.

The reason why we call it the Spanish flu possibly comes from he fact that it received great attention in Spain in 1918. Spain was not involved in the war, so it had no censorship on its press at the time. It would have been admitting to a weakness to speak about the epidemic in the newspapers.

Starting in October and November 1918, we can see a lot of articles in the Boston Globe on how difficult it was to find qualified nurses to take care of the patients in Lynn, MA for example. Two hospitals in Boston faced an overflow of patients.

On October 1st, an article states that the “grippe” (French word for flu) had killed 171 people between Sunday at 10 pm and Monday at 10 pm (24 hours). The State emergency Public Health Committee asked that all churches be closed in Boston the following Sunday in order to stop spreading the disease around. They also proposed that all saloons, theaters, and other locations where large number of people congregated be closed in the same way. The governor appropriated nearly ½ million of dollars to fight the epidemic. Within 24 hours, 5000 new cases were

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diagnosed. The committee called in more doctors and nurses from all over the state to come take care of the patients in the city

City official soon realized that they had no idea how they should handle burials in the city due to the number of people dying all at once, especially if the churches were closed. On the same day, the Globe published an article stating that the flu hit Harvard. (For those of you who have lived in the dorms at some point in your life, and considering how quickly germs spread in such environment, you can imagine the reaction of university officials when it hit the institution). The same reaction of panic hit when the state prison in Charlestown reported that they had 156 confirmed cases. The disease spread really quickly at the merchant marine base in Boston, and at Camp Devens.

Scientists at Tufts Medical College produced a vaccine, and injected the “people in charge” (for example the mayor) to try to prevent the spread and avoid chaos if the leadership fell. With that in mind, think about how difficult the return to normalcy was with all of this going on.

Return to Normalcy difficult As soldiers returned home, things had changed. Some of the soldiers returned home shell- shocked or injured. Some lost a family member to the flu. Some could find jobs or did not know how to go about finding a job (remember that a number of soldiers were young when they left for the war).

The return to normalcy was really difficult in the city. The demobilization took time. The armistice was signed on November 11, 1918 but the first soldiers coming back only reached Boston in January 1919. They had to go through a number of steps before being discharged from the military:

• They had to return from Europe by ship. • They were then sent to camps to be examined to make sure that they could return to

their civilian lives. • They had to fill out all of the necessary paperwork for discharge (pay, statements,

travel money, benefits, etc) which had to be processed.

Boston was one of the ports that welcomed the soldiers back from Europe. Every week, two transport ships brought soldiers back to the port. If they arrived after 2 pm, they would have to wait until the next day to get off the ship. The ships still had to go through quarantine, and then soldiers were taken from Boston to Camp Devens for discharge. (The 2pm rule was made so that the soldiers would not miss dinner once at Camp Devens).

Once they were discharged, the soldiers could reintegrate into the job market. During the war, the government controlled the economy through price fixing and defense contracts. As the economy returned to an economy of peace, unemployment increased, prices went up, and inflation reduced the population’s purchasing power across the nation.

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Red Scare in Boston With this difficult situation, a fear of communism spread across the nation. To give you more context, the Red Scare began after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia. A first revolution took place in February 1917 (March in the Gregorian Calendar, Russia still used the Julian calendar). At the time, the Duma took control of the country and the Tsar abdicated. In October, a second revolution (this time armed) led to the overthrow system and to the establishment of a soviet democracy.

Simultaneously, there was a wave of anarchism and socialism in the United States (unrelated to the revolution). Between 1916 and 1917, a number of violent labor strikes took place in the country, and a number of unions were seen as wanting to overthrow capitalism. If you combine these elements (Russian Revolution + socialism and anarchism in the US) to the arrival of millions of immigrants coming from Russia, you find yourself with an explosive mix.

In January 1919, more than 35,000 shipyard workers in Seattle went on strike seeking wage increases. In February, hundreds of other union workers followed their call, and over 60,000 workers paralyzed the city. In February 1919, following the strike, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary formed the Overman Committee which was tasked to investigate subversion and uncover communist elements infiltrating the United States. The committee painted a bleak picture of the situation, and argued that the Bolsheviks were indeed an eminent threat to the U.S. Government and American values. (They basically promoted nativism).

The April and May 1919 bombings pushed this discomfort to the level of fear. In April 1919, authorities discovered that 36 bombs had been mailed by anarchists to prominent capitalists, politicians, and judges. They targeted, among others, J. D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and other political figures of the time. Bostonian Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was a Supreme Court Justice, was targeted but the bomb never made it to his home. It was intercepted before it reached its destination due to the insufficient postage affixed to the package. They had also targeted William Wood who was a Lawrence Textile mill owner.

If violence did not affect the city directly, people were terrified when they saw pictures in the newspapers of the destruction that some of these devices caused. In September 1919, the violence finally struck at home.

Police strike In 1919, the Boston Police strike was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The police strike had been long in the making. For many years, Boston police officers had requested to join unions. Their work conditions were intolerable; they worked long hours (sometimes up to 80 hours a week), paid for their own uniforms, and their stations were in bad conditions (sometimes even infested with vermin and pests).The Police Commissioner, Edwin Upton Curtis, was part of the issue.

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Edwin Upton Curtis He was born in 1861 and passed away in 1922. He attended the Roxbury Latin School, then Bowdoin College. He was a Yankee (7th generation Bostonian), but as you can see from his not attending Boston Latin and Harvard, he was not a Brahmin. He apprenticed with former Massachusetts Governor William Gaston with whom he studied law. Curtis served as Boston City Clerk in 1889 and1890. He was elected mayor in 1895 to be defeated the same year (mayor terms lasted 1 year). He was appointed police commissioner in 1918 by the Governor.

Back to the Police strike Curtis used the same strategies that the city itself used during the fight against the Birth of a Nation. He claimed that the officers’ grievances should be voiced to the mayor and the city council instead of him, while the mayor and the city council told the officers that Curtis should be the one receiving their grievances.

The two past administrations, Fitzgerald and Curley’s administrations, had kept the police budget down to minimal levels. They had refused to raise the police officer salaries or to provide money for the improvement of the stations. With the inflation of 1919, the officers’ conditions deteriorated even further, and they sought help from the American Federation of Labor (AFofL).

When the police officers voted to affiliate with the AFofL Curtis issued Order #10, rule 19 which stated that “no member of the Force shall join or belong to any organization, club, or body… which is affiliated with or a part of any organization, club, or body outside of the department.” Curtis argued that Police officers were not considered employees but state officers, and that they could not perform their sworn duties if they were in a union. Curtis then tried 19 men, who signed to affiliate with the union, for violating the order, suspended them, but did not discharge them. This meant that the men were still officers and had to remain available to be called upon.

Seeing that the situation was at a stand still, Mayor Andrew Peters (the last Republican mayor of Boston) appointed a committee to try to find a compromise. He asked Curtis to delay the suspension of the 19 officers. The committee came up with a solution which said that police officers could form a union, but that the union could not be affiliated or connected to any labor organization. It also proposed that the city appoint a permanent committee to mediate police disputes. The mayor endorsed the report, and sent it to Curtis. Curtis rejected the proposal as infringing on his legal authority as Police Commissioner. Newspapers attacked Curtis, arguing that he was acting in bad faith.

To reaffirm his authority, he suspended the officers on September 8th, 1919. On the 9th, in the late afternoon, Boston police officers voted 1134 to 2 to go on strike. Upon hearing of the result, Curtis defiantly said: “I am prepared for all eventualities. I am ready for anything. (Spoilers alert, he was not!). The mayor panicked. He asked Curtis to call the national guard. Curtis placated him, saying that only a few officers would strike. Peters and Curtis met with Governor Coolidge who also acted to reassure them. At 5:45 that day 1117 out of the 1544 police officers left their jobs.

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There was some violence as the officers left their station. Some people in the crowd waited for officers to get out of their station to beat them up, saying that they were no longer officers. (Most of those people were criminals who held a grudge against the officers). More violence occurred in immigrant working-class neighborhoods (South Boston, Charlestown, North End, West End). Officers received cheers and support in other neighborhoods. Some Bostonians took advantage of the situation to cause chaos in the city by looting, breaking windows, and committing petty crimes. The violence lasted until 1:30 am that night

“Scabs” (strikebreakers), mostly students from Harvard University who had been sworn in, were due to report to replace the officers the next morning.

Calling in the guard Due to the violence and the lack of knowledge as to when the strike would end, Curtis capitulated quickly, and begged the the mayor to call the National Guard the next morning (September 10). Peters suspended Curtis as Commissioner, and took on the responsibility

Crowds gathered around Scollay Square throughout the day, and by 6 pm, about 15000 people had assembled. At 6, the National Guard cavalry arrived, rode into the crowd with drawn sabers, and attempted to rescue volunteers (scabs) who were trying to direct traffic. The crowds keep reforming, and people threw stones at the troops. By the late evening, the infantry had also arrived, and other guard units had poured into the city. Working with the cavalry, the infantry pushed rioters out of the square, and set up roadblocks to prevent their re-forming. By the early morning, barricades prevented traffic through Scollay Square.

By 8 pm, the heavy rain sent everyone home. Three hours later, the rioters had come back, and attacked an officer. Shots were fired, three killed, nine wounded. By Thursday (September 11), the guard had taken control of the city. At the peaceful juncture, where there were no open riots anymore, Coolidge finally intervened. He had remained silent all along. He called in the rest of the guard in case more unions decided to go on strike, and restored the Commissioner’s powers.

Aftermath of the Police Strike The Police Strike was condemned by most newspapers. Due to the chaos that ensued, the newspapers compared the strike to the Bolshevik Revolution, leading to an increase of the Red Scare. Since Curtis considered that the police officers had deserted, he recruited almost an entire new force. These new officers got raises, a pension, and improved work conditions (all that the original police officers had asked for). The Guard, who acted as a temporary police force for the city, was discharged after 102 days of work.

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Prohibition While this was happening, more took place at a political level. In 1918, the federal government passes a rather controversial amendment to the Constitution. Due to the demands of the war in terms of grains, the government tried to find ways to restrict its use state side. They encouraged people to lower their consumption through propaganda, but had very little success.

In order to reduce the use of grains, the government passes the Volstead Act. The long title: An Act to prohibit intoxicating beverages, and to regulate the manufacture, production, use, and sale of high-proof spirits for other than beverage purposes, and to ensure an ample supply of alcohol and promote its use in scientific research and in the development of fuel, dye, and other lawful industries.

Goal of the Act The goal of the act was to reduce the amount grains used in the production of alcohol by prohibiting the manufacturing, sale, or transport of intoxicating liquor (but not its consumption), and to ensure an ample supply of alcohol, and promote its use in scientific research, for example in the the development of fuel, dye and other lawful industries and practices, such as religious rituals.

Since medical and religious purposes were considered legal, patients went to their doctor with all sorts of “diseases.” Their doctors promptly obliged by prescribing alcohol to their patients.

The act, which was effective from October 28, 1919 to January 16, 1920, limited the alcoholic content to 0.5%. (Today’s regular beers contain between 5 and 9%, wine contains between 9 and 16%, and hard liquor contain about 40%).

The federal government called the Volstead Act the wartime prohibition, hence needed to do something to maintain the prohibition after the war since it had garnered the support of most reformers in favor of temperance.

The 18th Amendment With the Volstead Act in place, the 18th Amendment made prohibition a part of the United States Constitution. Again, the Amendment prohibited the manufacturing, sale, and transport of the liquor but not its consumption.

Text of the Amendment: After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

The Amendment was enacted on January 16, 1920 and was repealed during the Great Depression.

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Boston As you can imagine, the reaction in the city was fairly divided

• on one side, white Anglo-Saxon Reformers, especially those who had advocated temperance, support the prohibition (They were the Dries)

• Irish Catholics, and the clergy, are less enthusiastic about it. (They were the Wet) Alcohol was part of the traditions and religious life of the Irish community.

Effects of the law in the city It was also a large part of the economic life of the community who worked in the city port. For example, when 14 casks and 165 cases of wine arrived from Lisbon, Portugal in January 1920 after a transatlantic trip, no one knew what to do. Seal them and them send back? If they did so, who would pay for the shipping?

The law led to an increase in demand for law enforcement. Boston had a Police Commissioner, but with the prohibition, the city adds a prohibition commissioner who supervises the prohibition enforcement with his own force. As a result a number of police officers are specifically hired to do prohibition work (a little bit like the ATF today).

Some of the “liquor men,” distillers and manufacturers, sought jobs as prohibition enforcement officers since they wanted to make sure that the prohibition would be applied impartially, and not favor certain groups against their own interests. Unfortunately, their applications was turned down since the department considered them “disreputable.”

The prohibition led to an increase in moonshine production, especially of whiskey.

The prohibition came with a health cost as well. One thing that we rarely consider is that following the prohibition, there was a surge of visits to the doctor. I know that I mentioned that doctors could prescribe alcohol, but it was only in a small quantity per patient over a certain period of time. The surge came from alcoholic patients who experienced legitimate withdrawal symptoms. Furthermore, moonshine, because of its contraband nature, sometimes caused severe health issues, even leading to the death of some drinkers. Side notes: In some cities in Canada (Canada had prohibition at roughly the same time) for example, officials lifted the ban because doctors offices were too crowded and the system hand it.

Another cost came from shipping on tight schedules. A large number of vessels attempted to make last minute trips to stockpile gin from Cuba and beer from Europe before the amendment became law. Some had only a few days to make the trip. They faced bad storms where ships had to turn back for repairs, delaying their trips. Some even attempted to send their liquor and wine abroad to make sales from their supply before the amendment restricted the transport of alcohol out of the United States. There was an article published in the London Times at the time that said: “London doesn’t want whiskey which Americans are sadly shipping abroad!” (A lot of that whiskey came from Boston). The logic of people living in London, was that the liquor that

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Americans sent to the UK was the same liquor that brought prohibition in the United States in the first place. For that reason, they feared that the liquor would bring prohibition to the UK. They also feared that people would mix Scotch or Irish liquors with American liquors (a cheaper product of lesser quality), hence tricking patrons into drinking something that they did not order.

An additional cost came from the restrictions on shipping. Boston lost a large portion of the economy that stemmed from foreign sailors spending money in local shops, hotels, and bars. Following prohibition, foreign sailors were allowed to drink only on their ship in the port, and could not get off their ships while drunk. For that reason, most stayed on their ship, foregoing their visit to the city and their money spending.

According to the Boston Globe, the only advantage that Bostonians saw from the prohibition was an improvement in the entertainment offered in the city. Apparently, plays and music had to be better since everyone went to the theater sober.

Prohibition Eve Parties In Boston, several hotels organized large parties for Friday evening January 16, the day before Prohibition became law. They called it “Prohibition Eve.” The Globe described it as “the last opportunity for a public farewell to John Barleycorn.”

The name John Barleycorn came from a British folksong and was the personification of the alcohol that barley and corn made.

Hotels organized what they described as “special suppers, with favors, confetti, noise-makers, and other paraphernalia proverbially associated with New Year’s eve.” They planned to give away their leftover liquor since there was no law against giving it away for free. The Globe mentioned that “the custom would probably be followed by those hostelries which find themselves heavily stocked with wines and liquors which they are unable to sell.” “Incidentally, higher prices even than on New Years’s eve are likely to be asked on “Prohibition Eve,” the suppers in some hotels running as high as $10 a cover.” ($120-125 in today’s dollars)

Some even organized wakes to celebrate the life and demise of John Barleycorn (You have to admit that Bostonians had a sense of humor and were quite dramatic about the whole thing!)

Referendum Due to the opposition to prohibition, several lawyers in Boston and in New England attempt to prove that prohibition is unconstitutional. As you can imagine, they do not succeed. Prior to the 18th Amendment becoming law, beer makers lobbied to keep 2.75% beer legal, saying that 2.75% is definitely not intoxicating, as proven by experience. The Supreme Court rejected their argument, saying that Congress had the right to fix the % of alcohol allowed in beverages.

Already in January 1920, a number of leagues in Massachusetts pressed for a referendum to increase the percentage of alcohol from 0.5% to 4%. They wanted to do so before Massachusetts

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ratified its own prohibition Amendment. At the time, a number of town elections were taking place, and the wets gained ground in the State.

Article about testing the alcohol The article that you see in the slide was published in the Boston Globe on March 13, 1920. At the time, Massachusetts intended to do a referendum on allowing production of alcohol with more than the % allowed by the prohibition law. Look at the article. Why do you think that the article proposes to test alcohol on Marines?

The referendum finally took the form as a ballot measure during the November 2nd 1920 election (the first election during which women voted). The question asked people in Massachusetts if they believed that cider, beer, wine and other similar drinks with low alcohol content, should be defined as non-intoxicating liquors. The result were quite close. 442,215 voters (50.53%) voted in favor of the motion of not defining low alcohol beverages as intoxicating liquors, while 432,951 people voted against the proposal (49.47%).

In 1922, Baby Volstead Act As you can imagine, the dries were definitely unhappy with the result, and they continued to lobby the state legislature to prohibit the sale of alcohol. In 1922, the state attempted a last measure which would bring prohibition enforcement at the state level. The ballot question was rejected by voters, and the law project was abandoned.

Gangsterism Like in other cities, prohibition brought gangsterism to Boston. If Chicago had a mystical figure such as Al Capone, Boston’s criminals remain relatively unknown.

Charles Solomon Solomon was part of the Jewish Russian Mob, which many nicknamed the Kosher Nostra (the Italian mafia was referred to as Cosa Nostra).

Solomon was born in 1884 in Russia and immigrated to city as a young boy. His family settled in the West End where his father was a local theater owner. Solomon worked as a teen as a counterman in his uncle’s restaurant. In the 1920s, he got involved in prostitution as a “pimp,” fencing, and bail bonding. By the end of the 1920s, he controlled the majority of gambling and narcotics trafficking in the city. He especially focused on cocaine and morphine which had become restricted under the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914. During the prohibition, he expanded his markets to bootlegging to bring booze to speakeasies in the city. In 1922, he was tried on narcotic charges, but was acquitted of these charges. He was however, found guilty of intimidating a witness into perjury and was sentenced to a five year prison sentence. He became one of the leaders of the Big seven Group, which was a crime syndicate including the top leaders of the mafia around the country, once the violence between the different factions died in 1927. (the original members included Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, Abner "Longy" Zwillman of New Jersey, Moe Dalitz of Cleveland, Waxey Gordon and Harry "Nig" Rosen of Philadelphia and

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Danny Walsh of Providence. It also included Arnold Rothstein, Johnny Torrio, Lucky Luciano, and Meyer Lansky as supporters of the syndicate). Al Capone, Solomon, and Dutch Schultz of Manhattan requested membership at the same time.

Solomon and three others were indicted in Brooklyn in early January 1933 on charges of operating a liquor smuggling ring. He was killed by a gunman in a Boston night club on January 24, 1933. Two months after Solomon was killed, his partner Alexander Lillien, was murdered at his house in New Jersey.

Gustin Gang Formed by Brothers Frank and Steve Wallace in the mid 1910s. They had started small, mostly looting and hijacking trucks at intersections, but quickly controlled most of Southie. They increased their activities, including armed robberies in the early 1920s. During the prohibition, they used prohibition enforcement badges to “confiscate” alcohol shipments from rival gangs, and then sold them themselves. In 1931, after hijacking an number of Italian American gangster trucks, they agreed to a sit down with the Italian mafia and were killed in an ambush.

From that point on, the Italian mafia pretty much controlled all criminal activities in the city. In 1916, Gaspare Messina formed the Boston Crime Family. Born in Sicily, 1879-1957, moved to Brooklyn in 1905, then to Boston in 1915. He was a “rapprestentante,” a member of the Sicilian Underground. During the Prohibition, he partnered with a number of Italian immigrants in the North End and began opening legitimate stores as a front to launder money. He opened the G. Messina & Co. wholesale grocery business of Prince Street, then became the president of the Neptune Oil Corporation. He also served as a boss of bosses over the American Mafia in the 1930-1931 Castellammarese War. The New England mafia will become more prominent in the 1950s, and the Irish mafia in the 1960s.

Nativism All of these phenomenon (the Red Scare, the Police Strike, and gangsterism) led again to a rise of a nativist sentiment in the city. In 1921 and in 1924, Yankee Bostonians push for a restriction of immigration. They especially opposed the new immigration coming out of Southern and Eastern Europe.

After intense lobbying from the nativist movement the United States Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921 (The National Origins Act). The Act restricted the number of immigrants admitted from any country annually to 3% of the number of residents from that same country living in the United States as of the U.S. Census of 1910. However, many, including a large number of Bostonians, felt that the restriction was not strict enough, and in 1924, the federal government passed the Immigration Act of 1924. This act limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890 (years before the new immigration began, hence restricting the number of immigrants much further).

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Sacco-Vanzetti The nativist sentiment, however, reaches much greater proportions in the State during the trial of Nicholas Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born Anarchists. These two anarchists were accused, then convicted, of first degree murder of a guard and a paymaster of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts. Despite the fact that witnesses recanted their testimony, that there was conflicting evidence, that the jury was prejudicial against the accused, and that an alleged participant confessed to the crime, their appeals did not succeed. Their case became popular. Protests in the United States and around the world (as far as in Japan and South Africa) demanded that the two be found innocent. There was a state investigation, launched by Massachusetts Governor Alvan T. Fuller, but nothing changed. The two were executed in the electric chair on August 23, 1927.

Historians who have since studied the case all conclude that the authorities and the jurors were influenced by an anti-immigrant, and especially anti-Italian prejudice. Although they were part of an anarchist group, they had not been part of a group which had financed their activities through robberies. Some even argued that they had been tried for the robbery murder to stop their activities as anarchists.

Eugenics Eugenics, the theory and practice which aimed at improving the genetic quality of groups of individuals became extremely popular in the late 1910s and 1920, following the rise in nativism in the country.

Eugenics stemmed from translation of the principles of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species to the human realm. This translations, popularized by Francis Galton, promoted selective breeding in order to improve on humanity’s genetic making.

Eugenics was seen from two angles: • Positive Eugenics: which promoted the breeding of the good stock (usually White

Anglo Saxon Protestant middle class) in order to improve civilization. Positive eugenics policies can also be seen in genetic screening for in vitro fertilization for example, arranged marriages could also lead to positive eugenics, etc.

• Negative Eugenics: which promoted the removal of the bad stock (undesirable traits such as mental illness, birth defects, low IQ, criminal behavior, deviance, or even racial make up) through prohibition of marriage, forced sterilization, or even death through genocide. The extreme version of eugenics can be seen in Hitler’s genocide of Jews and other instances of racial cleansing seen in history. Forced sterilization took place in the United States, especially on African American women. Doctors who wanted to alleviate poverty in Black communities removed women's uteruses without their consent during unrelated surgeries. This practice was nicknamed the “Mississippi appendectomy.” People with mental disabilities were also often sterilized to reduce the risk of transmission of their “defect” to potential offspring. Anti-miscegenation laws were common in the United States, including in

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Massachusetts, until 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia. (Ruth Negga plays in a recent movie called Loving about the case). Massachusetts abolished its anti-miscegenation law in 1843. However, the legislature enacted a law in 1913, preventing out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts. In more recent years, this law served to prevent same-sex couples from other states from marrying in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage was legalized in 2004. The law was repealed in 2008.

In 1912, Charles William Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard, promoted positive eugenics for racial purposes. He opposed intermixing of races, saying that “each nation should keep its stock pure.” When Eliot spoke of races, he did not only consider Black and white, he considered Catholics marrying Protestants, Jews marrying Gentiles, and other people from different origins marrying outside of their community.

After the publishing Madison Grant’s The Passage of the Great Race in 1916 (an alarming book about the possible extinction of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant race), classification of races became even more sophisticated. Harvard professor Louis Agassiz, the father of suffragist Pauline Agassiz Shaw, divided humankind into different races using the bible to trace the origins of each (He used the Table of Nations in the Bible to identify each race and their descendants). He noted that a number of races, including Asians and Africans, had not been named in the Bible, and claimed that the books’ authors were simply limited by their geographical location.

Their thought influenced Bostonians who listened to these professors and lecturers. As we have seen, the fact that educated white Anglo-Saxon Protestant women delayed pregnancies or refrained from having children further caused concern and fear of “race suicide,” i.e. that they would cause the demise of the white race. Every state formed its own Eugenics society and organized “fittest baby” contests where mothers proudly displayed their offspring who were then examined by the medical community. Ultimately, eugenics policies reinforced nativism, especially against communities who promoted high birth rates (especially of Catholic descent due to the Catholic church’s reproductive policies).

Jazz age in Boston If Boston follows the national pattern in terms of red scare, and somewhat gangsterism, does it follow the same pattern on a cultural level? Was there a Jazz age or a New Negro Renaissance in the city? If you remember, we mentioned before that Boston is a conservative city. You might also remember that the Black population in the city was relatively small (approximately 2% of the total population). As a result, Jazz took a long time to come to the city. The interesting piece is that Jazz was introduced in Boston at first as part of classical music concerts in order to ease the music into Bostonians’ repertoire. It took a while before the city has its very first Jazz club. Bostonians had to wait until the early 1940s to have a dedicated jazz club.

Prior to the 1940s, a number of jazz bands came from NYC, for example, but played at Symphony Hall or other mainstream venues. They also played other styles of music instead of focussing only on jazz. For example, in one of the articles that I found in the Boston Globe, the

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reporter mentioned that the “Highbrow musicians were interested in the genuine negro folks songs.” That means that they were stuffy high class musicians who were interested in the traditional music

New Negro Renaissance Across the nation the Great Migration is often credited for triggering a renaissance of Black literature. The expression “New Negro Renaissance” comes from the publication of Alain Locke’s book the New Negro in 1925. Most of the Renaissance took place in Harlem and Chicago. However, Boston has its own little Renaissance.

Saturday Evening Quill The Saturday Evening Quill was formed in 1928 in Boston. The group positioned itself as an amateur African American writing group. In a statement to the reader in their first publication, the authors stated that they intended to publish for its members only and not for the general public. What is even more interesting is that several of the members were successful playwrights and novelists at the time. However, they never presented themselves as such. They always said that they were lawyers, editors, publishers, etc. One could deduce that this came from the conservative roots of the city and what Bostonians considered as “appropriate.”

Roaring 20s For the rest of Bostonians, how do the 1920s shape up? After the economic depression of 1921 (the recession following the demobilization), the economy began to pick up and Bostonians ended up with a much greater spending power than they had before. Due to this economic power, they saw the emergence of a new consumer culture.

Most Bostonians had saved a little money during the war (either through bonds or through savings). Once the war was over and their situation stabilized, they began to spend it. Women were now entering the work force in larger numbers (at least until they married). With the invention of the car, companies considered lending money to people for them to afford goods that they could not afford otherwise. The development of credit allowed people to purchase without having to pay all at once. Companies then charged interest on the purchase to make up for the time it took for them to pay.

At the same time, there was a shift in the way that people shopped on a daily basis. Companies innovated by opening larger and larger department stores. These department stores offered a variety of merchandize that customers could touch, try on, or even compare. This new type of purchasing completely changed the ways in which people shopped. Bostonians still go to different historical markets to purchase their food but they go to Washington Street, for example at Jordan Marsh, to purchase other goods.

The convenience of household items (such as toasters or washing machines) made the life of women much easier. The arrival of electricity transformed one’s household routine (think about the washing machine, the oven where you can set your temperature to a fixed number instead of

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having to set gas or a fire). Products that were once luxuries became necessities in the modern home.

Access to cars With the invention credit in the 20s, more people had access to cars. In Boston, in particular, this creates 2 new phenomena: traffic jams and a push for suburbanization. The idea of traffic jams in Boston is self-explanatory. In the 1920s, the infrastructure was not yet ready to accommodate the increase in vehicles in the city. The fact that the city still had hybrid traffic (horses and cars) created difficult situations as you can see from the slide. (I added an article entitled “Congestion as a Cultural Construct: The ‘Congestion Evil’ in Boston in the 1890s and 1920s.” Take a peak if you are interested in traffic issues!)

Suburbanization As Bostonians made more money and climbed up the socio-economic ladder, they slowly moved to the suburbs. (Think about the theory of the last immigrants) The car facilitated this process and helped Bostonians move further and further from the city center. In the 1920s, a large number of Jews were able to reach the middle class. They decided to settle in towns like Brookline and Newton, outside of Boston. They left the center of town, especially the neighborhoods of Dorchester and Roxbury to settle in the suburb

This is a really small but consistent pattern of suburbanization which continues throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. However, it is not like the large push for suburbanization which took place in the 1950s after World War II.

Political system One of the last pieces of the 1920s, is the fact that women get the vote. As you can remember, the vote was long in coming in the city. Since the 1840s, suffrage activists had been trying to get the vote for women. Women received partial suffrage in 1879, allowing women to vote at the school level.

When they got the vote in 1920, they began to register for the primary election. As soon as they learned of their ability to register, women flooded the registration booths that opened in several locations in the city. Despite being open from 9 am to 10 pm daily, the booths could not meet the demand. During the first day of the extended period, 3042 women registered. Women were exempt from the annual poll tax which had been abolished in the 1890s. The number of registered women voters rose to 31,809 by the 21st of August. On the election day, anti- suffragists (women), who had claimed that they did not believe in the vote, cast their ballots all over the city.

There were a lot of questions as whom the women would favor. Would they vote for their husband’s party or not? Would they make their choice on their own?

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During the election, some people tried to manipulate the women’s vote. In the South End, a woman was directed to “vote for twenty” at the top of the list of candidates. Upon reading the whole ballot, she noticed that only 19 names were listed. Requesting the help of the warden of the election, she commented that, while directed to “vote for twenty,” she was not going to have her “ballot invalidated by any such political trick as that.” In Roxbury, a group of women went to the poll from the Home for Aged Men and Women. At 102 years old, Annie Stone, the oldest woman voter in Roxbury, could not get to the polls. Although she had intended to cast her ballot, a “bronchial affection” kept her home. However, she told the reporter of the Globe that she “hope[d] to vote in November. (No further mention of her makes me believe that she sadly passed away before the election in November). One woman took nearly “26 minutes by the watch to mark her ballot,” making her choice quite deliberately. Finally, in Dorchester, public and private spheres met as women “wheeled baby carriages to the Codman-sq[uare] voting booth, and lined them up,” in the street, prior to casting their ballots.

The November election became more heated and the women’s vote played in the tensions already present in the political system. The city had been redistricted in 1914. This redistricting directly affected the African American community. Ward 13 in South Boston was almost equally divided between African Americans and Irish. That ward was especially important in terms of the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats. African Americans had voted Republican since the Civil War and Irish had voted Democrats. In that context, if the women voted in a block, they were to be the swing vote in the city.

So, during the election, two Black Republicans (a doctor and a lawyer) ran for the Republicans and two white Irish Catholics ran for the Democrats. Since the election was so uncertain, the Democrats took the matter in their own hands. They ran a dirty campaign, disparaging the Republicans. They especially focused on the race hatred of the Democrats at the time, emphasizing that the Republicans were suspicious and could not be trusted.

The most interesting piece in this case is that on the eve of the election in November, the Democrats specifically attacked Black women to suppress their vote. They sent them personalized letters from a fake commission, using a fake law, stating that they were illegally registered and that if they voted, they could be fined $500 or be sentenced to a year in prison. As a result, a large number of women were scared from the poll and the Democrats won the election.

This case shows us that voter discrimination and suppression was widespread, even in Boston, where progressive activists had fought for Black equality for centuries. It also shows us that Boston’s Black women yielded a large amount of power, enough to scare the Democrats who feared that they would not be re-elected. 


Where does that lead us? The 1920s were difficult at first, especially with the Red Scare, the difficult demobilization, and the economic depression. There is a rise of nativism and difficulties in terms of race relations. From 1921-1922 on, there was a period of prosperity, of cultural development with the

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Renaissance, and of greater freedom for a number of Bostonians (women in particular). However, this prosperity came with strings attached. The over-production of the 1920s led to the crash of 1929 and to the Great Depression, which we will see in the second module this week.