Modern Boston History Class Exam 2

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Week 3.3 World War II and the 1950s History 385

Julie de Chantal

Context of the War The Great Depression gives rise of trouble in Europe. As I mentioned last week, the stock market crash led to an international crisis. Some countries in Europe and Asia were affected more deeply than others. The economic crisis ultimately created the circumstances necessary for the rise of right-wing movements.

Italy After World War I, Italy was denied claims on any German or Ottoman colonies in Africa and in the Middle East. Mussolini was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 1921. In 1922, he planned a coup and took over the government, becoming the country’s Prime Ministry, and ultimately created a one-party dictatorship with the National Fascist Party. During his time as Prime Minister, he developed the fascist ideology which guided Italy during the war.

Japan On December 25, 1926, Hirohito assumed the throne upon the death of his father Yoshihito. The first part of Hirohito's reign as sovereign took place against a background of financial crisis and increasing military power within the government. Prior to World War II, Japan invaded Manchuria (Northeastern China) in 1931, and the rest of China in 1937 (the Second Sino- Japanese War). Hirohito’s main concern seems to have been the possibility of an attack by the Soviet Union in the north.

Germany Germany faced really harsh terms in the Treaty of Versailles. At the time, Germany had to pay reparation to France, was demilitarized, and forced to make territorial concessions. Hitler was a corporal in the German Army during WWI, joined the German Workers’ Party in 1919, and became party leader in 1921. In the 1920s, he was inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome and take over of the government. In 1923, he attempted a coup in Munich, was arrested, and sentenced to 5 years in prison. During his sentence, he wrote Mein Kampf (the blueprint for Nazi Germany). He was released in 1924, after a single year in prison, for good behavior.

After his release, he formed the National Socialist German Workers Party (the NSDAP), promoted anti-semitism, nativism, and anti-communism. When the stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929, the impact in Germany was dire: millions lost their jobs, and several major banks collapsed. Hitler and the NSDAP (the Nazi Party) took advantage of the emergency to gain support for their party. They promised to repudiate the Treaty of Versailles, strengthen the economy, and provide jobs to German citizens. The party gained more and more popularity (don't forget that no matter what, it was a legitimate party at the time). In 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor, and in 1934, after President von Hindenburg’s death, he took on the

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powers of both President and Chancellor. Hitler thus became head of state as well as head of government, and was formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).

Neutrality Act of 1935 By 1935, Congress and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) somewhat knew that the war was eminent. They decided to take a stand and proclaim the United States’ neutrality toward foreign conflicts. The first Neutrality Act of 1935 placed an embargo on selling arms to warring counties. American travelers who traveled on ships registered in belligerent nations were warned that they would do so at their own risk.

Neutrality Act of 1936 In 1936, the Neutrality Act was renewed for another 14 months. It forbade all loans to belligerent nations. This act did not apply to Spain as a warring country nor to civil wars (in 1936, Spain entered a civil war under the dictatorship of General Franco). It also did not apply to oil and trucks. Companies like Texaco, Standard Oil, General Motors, Ford, and Studebaker exploited this loophole and sold products to General Franco in Spain.

Neutrality Act of 1937 In 1937, the United states extended the Neutrality Act to Spain, and added the civil war clause. This time, the act did not have an expiration date. U.S. ships were further prohibited from transporting any passengers or articles to belligerent nations, and U.S. citizens were forbidden from traveling on ships of belligerent nations.

Cash And Carry In 1939, upon declaration of war from England and France on Germany, Congress made a concession. If a warring country wanted to purchase nonmilitary goods from the United States, the President could allow it, only if the country paid in cash and carried the materials purchased with their own ships at their own risk. Later in the year, the Cash and Carry policy was expanded to military goods, ending the arms embargo of the Neutrality acts.

Invasion of Czechoslovakia, then Poland When Germany invaded Czechoslovakia then Poland, the United States still maintained its neutrality. FDR, however, knew that Europe was on the road to war and persuaded Congress to increase aid to Britain.

Lend-Lease Act In 1940, France surrendered to Germany. Britain stood alone facing Germany. Two months later, Britain was no longer able to pay for arms bought from USA, and as a result, Roosevelt convinced Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act. The act authorized the President “to lend, lease or otherwise dispose of arms and other equipment” to Britain or any country whose defense was considered vital to the security of the United States. When Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union in 1941, the USA extended the lend-lease act to the Soviets. It was the unofficial entrance

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of the United States into the War. (Don’t forget that the USSR was allied with the United States, Britain, and France in World War II.)

Pearl Harbor Japan’s actions and not Germany’s triggered the participation of the United States in the war. In the 1930s, Japan invaded China, which FDR denounced as “a reign of terror.” FDR refused to intervene when Japanese troops sacked the city of Nankin, massacred 300,000 residents, raped thousands of women, and sank an American gunboat. October 1941, General Tojo became prime minister, and accelerated the militarization of the country. By November, American military intelligence knew that Japan was planning an attack on American soil. However, they didn't know when or where it would occur.

Early on Sunday morning, December 7th, 1941, Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor, killing more than 2,400 civilians and servicemen, and destroyed 8 battleship, 3 cruisers, 3 destroyers, and 200 planes. The attack rallied the United States behind formal entry into the war. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the USA, and the USA declared war on those nations.

Draft In the summer of 1940, once France fell to Germany, the United States reestablished the draft. At the time, 71% of Americans supported the draft. The United States government used the Selective Service Act of 1917 as a model for the draft in 1940, and required all men age 21 to 35 to register with the board. Men were then selected for a one-year service through a national lottery. The term was extended to two years in August 1941. After the entry into the war, the term of service was extended to the duration of the war + six months, and the age extended from 18 to 64 years of age. A total of 49 million men registered and 36 million were classified. 10 million of them were inducted into the military

World War II in Boston In Boston, the interest in the draft was high because Bostonians saw military participation as a patriotic duty. You can see registration cards in the slides. In addition to the men who were mustered into federal service, the Massachusetts National Guard was also called into service.

Again, the Yankee Division (the World War I division) was activated in Boston. Soon after, the 242nd Coast Artillery was activated as well. In order to provide a more flexible approach to the war, divisions were dismantled and re-formed into smaller more specialized regiments.

Throughout the war, the Yankee Division suffered casualties to this extent: • Total battle casualties: 10,701 • Killed in action: 1,850 • Wounded in action: 7,886 • Missing in action: 159 • Prisoners of war: 806

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The Yankee Division was recognized as having liberated the Gusen Concentration camp in upper Austria. Members of the division received 2 Medals of Honor, 38 Distinguished Service Crosses, 7 Legions of Merit, 927 Silver Stars, 42 Soldier's Medals, 5,331 Bronze Star Medals, and 98 Air Medals.

Black soldiers Black soldiers were sent to the 93rd Division, in the same way that they were sent during World War I (the military was still segregated). They fought abroad starting in 1944. You can see a picture of the DE-529, The USS Mason, one of two warships manned almost exclusively by African-American crews. It was commissioned at Boston Navy Yard on March 20, 1944.

Conscientious objectors During the Second World War, a large number of conscientious objectors (COs) refused to enlist in the military. We have discussed the refusal of Quakers to participate in armed conflicts. During World War II, a number of Seventh Day Adventists also refused to enlist on religious grounds. Others, who did not necessary belong to these churches, refused to enlist on moral grounds. A large number of them were students, mostly between 18 and 21 years old. However, some records indicate that those who came from the Greater Boston area were a little older than the majority of COs. All of the COs came from a range of occupation and religious denominations, and did not seem to have much in common except for their refusal to participate in the war.

COs were sent to camps where they performed civilian work of national importance. These tasks could be to work as farmers, participate in the war industry, or even be subjects in experimentations. They did not necessarily stay in Massachusetts for their service. A large number of COs from Boston were sent to New Hampshire.

Experiments in the Boston area Boston scientists helped with different experiments “of national importance.”

For example Camp 115 in Boston, located at the Massachusetts General Hospital, was involved in research on malaria. Scientists at the camp especially focused on the effect of dietary changes in protein intake for the treatment of the disease. (Remember that several soldiers were sent to malaria-prone areas during the war. Finding a cure was of national importance).

The same lab conducted another experiment on the effect of drinking sea water. Since there was a genuine concern about navy servicemen being stranded in life boats, scientists tested the toxicity of the sea water on volunteer conscientious objectors. Five volunteers spent two weeks in a life raft in Cotuit Bay (Cape). They discovered that men could prevent dehydration “by soaking their clothes and hanging over the side of the raft for five minutes every half hour,” hence reducing their need to drink.

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Another experiment was conducted at the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University between November 1943 through February 1946. Up to thirteen men were subjected to extremely adverse conditions simulating communication while under high noise levels encountered in military aircrafts.

Prisoners of War (POW) In early 1944, Italian POWs arrived in Boston to serve in the Italian Service Units (ISUs), wearing simplified American military uniforms, and doing essential wartime work locally in exchange for increased liberty. Their presence, and more specifically, their level of freedom, led to a local (and eventually national) outcry, accusing the U.S. Army of "coddling" the enemy. Italians POWs in America were, overall, sympathetic to the Allied cause. Almost 90% of the Italian POWs agreed to support the U.S. war effort by joining the Italian Service Units. The almost 45,000 Italian POWs who eventually agreed to join Italian Service Units were relocated, almost immediately, to coastal and industrial sites across the United States (like Boston). They worked with American civilians and military personnel in combat related work for the remainder of the war. By contrast, non-collaborating Italian POWs were kept in highly isolated camps in places like Texas, Arizona, Wyoming and Hawaii. In Boston, prisoners of war were put to work for example in the navy yard. On the slide, we can see Italian POW’S unload supplies received at the Boston Port of Embarkation by rail.

Transformation of the city Following the declaration of war, Boston became a war city.

For example, Logan Airport, which had been constructed in 1923 and was used mainly by the Massachusetts Air Guard and the Army Corps (it was called Jeffery Field at the time), served as a military airfield during the war. It was used as the Air Technical Service Command, through a Joint use as a USAAF/Navy/Civil Airport.

The Boston Navy Yard, which already constructed ships for the Navy, increased its production capacity. As you can see from this map, a large number of annexes were constructed in order to make a larger number of ships. For example the South Boston Annex began operating in March 1940. In the Spring of 1941, a new power plant project provided more machinery to increase the capacity of the yard. The Navy Yard even constructed barracks for the working crews, and had 3 shifts running in order to work around the clock.

The Chelsea Naval Hospital served as a military hospital (one of the first to accommodate naval personnel).

The Watertown Arsenal, which had been established in 1816, expanded its size in order to supply the demand in armament.

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Blackouts Military planes and submarines were used extensively during the Second World War. Due to its proximity to the ocean, Boston instituted blackouts in case the German army would attack at night like it did in England.

The state house’s dome, which was a gold color at that time, was painted black to avoid reflection in the event of a bombing. One woman who lived in Cambridge said that, as a child, she feared planes bombing, but learned later that blackouts were also needed so that city lights would not silhouette ships in the harbor for the prowling U-boats. At the time, “No lights were allowed, not even the tiny radio dial light. Blackout curtains were in every window. Air raid wardens patrolled the streets with their white helmets and arm bands. When the Air Raid sirens screeched warnings, the wardens would tell everyone to get off the streets and go into their homes. A cheer would go up when the “all clear” sounded.”

Detention center As a result, Boston serves as a detention center early in the war (before the United States declared war on Japan and Germany). The East Boston Immigration and Naturalization detention facility had served several purposes since its opening in 1920. The East Boston Immigration Station could accommodate a maximum of 582 immigrants, and processed nearly 23,000 immigrants between 1920 and 1954 when it closed. Most immigrants were inspected at the piers or on board ships. Those suspected of carrying diseases were sent to the detention facility (called the Station) for secondary inspection. Approximately 10% of all immigrants ended up at the Station. Immigration officials also sent those who required additional investigation to the station (“the illiterate, the insane, criminals, polygamists, anarchists, prostitutes” as well as “young children traveling alone” and “young, unmarried women traveling without guardians.”). Chinese immigrants who were suspected of not carrying the right paperwork were sent to the station.

Chinese immigrants were segregated from the rest of the immigrants due to the special nature of the limitation on their immigration. In 1875, the federal government enacted the Page Act which limited Chinese immigration, especially for women who might become prostitutes (i.e. any woman traveling alone), forced laborers, or possible convicts. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act further restricted the immigration of Chinese nationals, only allowing diplomats or businessmen (and their household) in the country. Skilled and unskilled workers were prohibited from entering the country (i.e. all workers!). If anyone left the country, they needed a special permit to reenter. The two policies broke up families and led to a skewed gender ratio in Chinese communities all over the country (large number of men to very small number of women) which ultimately led to the increase in prostitution, the very problem that the government wanted to curb.

In the 1930s, the station was used to detain immigrants who were considered communist agitators. During the war, the East Boston Detention facility served as a temporary detention center for those who were considered enemy aliens. For example on March 30, 1941, two ship

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crews, one from Italy and one from Germany, bound to Boston were detained at the East Boston station under an “anti-sabotage” order.

The Alien Registration Act of 1940 The United States had passed the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act) which made it a criminal offense to advocate for the violent overthrow of the government or to organize or be a member of any group or society devoted to such advocacy. Immigration officials used the law or minor offense laws to detain anyone who was seen as possibly against the United States. It was the first peace-time sedition act.

In addition to the fact that it limited the freedoms of anyone in the United States, the Alien Registration Act required all non-citizen adults to register with the government (even those who were permanent residents). Alien residents had to gain certification either at the Federal Building in Boston, or at their post office (specific ones were designated as processing centers). Approximately 31,000 resident aliens registered in 1940 as a preemptive measure. An additional 26,500 registered through their postal districts by March 1st 1942 (the deadline to register). Those who failed to register, nearly 4,500 of them in Boston, faced internment. This was especially true for those of German, Italian, and Japanese decent.

“Enemy” Round up? Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the entry of the United States in the war, more “enemy aliens” were arrested by the FBI and detained at the East Boston facility. On January 19, 1942, the New York Times reported that Harvard University instructor Dr. Karl Otto Heinrich Lange, a German immigrant, and 29 other “enemy aliens,” had been held at the East Boston station since the United States declared war on December 8, 1941. By July 14, 1942, the "enemy alien" population at the Station was comparatively smaller and included only 4 Japanese, 3 Germans, no Italians, and 1 individual of “miscellaneous” nationality. Like other temporary detention centers, East Boston held its “enemy aliens” for 1 to 4 months, and detainees were then released or transferred to other detention facilities or internment camps.

Most of what is known about the Japanese detainees at the East Boston detention center is derived from the recollections of Max Ebel, a German immigrant who was arrested by the FBI in September 1942 and held in the East Boston facility for four months. Though Ebel never discovered why he had been picked up, he stated that one Japanese detainee had been arrested by the FBI because he had his shoes shined across the street from General Electric, while another Japanese man was arrested because his rosary crucifix, which contained a small opening, arousing suspicion of the agents on site.

Ebel also recalled the day that he and another German detainee helped save the life of an incarcerated Japanese man who, they discovered, had slit his own throat in a suicide attempt. Most of the detainees were shipped to Maryland, Tennessee or North Dakota for long-term detention.

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The facility finally served as a detention center for European refugees seeking refuge during and after World War II as their cases were reviewed.

Rationing During the war, the Government needed to ensure that the military had all that it needed. Food and supplies were particularly important. Only a few days after the declaration of war, the federal government rationed the sale of tires. Propaganda encouraged drivers to drive slower in order to make their tires last longer. Only a few days after the order to ration tires, there was a rise in tire theft in Boston. Some resorted to returning to horses as their main mode of transportation in the city. They even shoed horses at some Cambridge gas stations. The rationing of home deliveries of milk and groceries were considered (remember that most women stay at home, so milk was delivered directly to their homes).

Congress reduced the national speed on the highways to 40 mph and later to 35 mph. Massachusetts’s speed limit was lower than the national speed limit so the law had little effect on BOsotn. Massachusetts had a limit of 20 miles per hour in city areas, and of 30 mph in rural areas.

Tires were only the first step in rationing. Food control was already on the table in early 1942 (pun intended!). At first, the government restricted sugar to 1 pound per person per week. It also suggested that homemakers forced their families to eat fresh fruit instead of baking with sugar, and to stir beverages carefully in order to sweeten them properly. City officials began to teach nutrition in schools, and to publish more nutritional advice in the newspapers.

If one wanted to buy a toothpaste tube, they needed to turn in the old one. (They were made of recyclable metal). When butter was low, people used margarine, which was squeezed to turn yellow (see slide). Soon, the government rationed gasoline, and encouraged car pooling (remember that because of the suburbanization of the 1920s, people had to commute to work).

In 1943, the government launched another wave of rationing with meat, canned goods, coffee, and grains. That year, the Office of Price Administration created a booklet to help manage a fair rationing system. When families purchased a rationed item, they had to present a coupon from the book in addition to their money. This ensured that people did not go over quota for the week or the month.

People were encouraged to plant Victory gardens to supplement their rations. This task was especially important to women who were seen as the planners for their families. Families were asked to recycle their bottles, tin cans, and paper. The rationing continued through the end of the war.

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Women in the military During World War II, women’s work changed substantially. Unlike World War I, where they have a minor role to play in the war (often times in predominantly female positions), women played a large role in World War II, especially in the military. They could join the WACS (Women’s Army Corps), the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), or the WASPS (even join as jet fighters). Women even joined the Marines (see the picture in the slides). Six months after Pearl Harbor, there were nearly 12,000 female nurses on duty in the Army Nurse Corps. An additional 28,000 joined by the end of the war. The Nurse Corps also accepted a small number of Black nurses (479) who took care of the Black servicemen and of German Prisoners of war (you can imagine how difficult it was for them to treat people whose racial agenda was fairly clear). Most of the Black nurses were sent to follow the troops overseas (for example in Liberia where they had to deal with problems like malaria that other nurses did not have to face).

Civilian women also contributed to the war. During the Second World War, women replaced men in all types of jobs. This time, instead of insisting that women were weak and that they should remain in the home or doing tasks that fit their sensitivities, propaganda (through the newspapers, government etc) depict women as strong enough to complete any task. In the Boston area, worked worked at the Watertown Armory. At the Armory, which provided around the clock child care for their employees.

For the first time in history, women had the opportunity to wear steel-toed shoes (no one had made steel-toed shoes in women’s style and size before). Women were trained for technical professions (Here at Rindge Technical School in Boston). Many were trained as machinists to manufacture large guns at the Watertown Arsenal. A number of them were part of the Manhattan project that we will discuss in a few minutes. You can see a press release announcing that former Watertown Arsenal civilian employee Judith Marie Gallagher, currently a Private First Class in the US Marines, is now stationed at Washington, DC, ca. 1944.

Manhattan Project When we think about the war, we often think about the Manhattan project. Vannevar Bush was at the center of the project. He was born in Everett Mass on March 11, 1890 and passed away in Belmont, MA, on June 28, 1974. He earned his undergraduate and masters degrees from Tufts College (Tufts allowed students to finish with a MA if they did a master’s thesis while they completed their undergrad degree, so he did so). After graduating, he worked for General Electric which was located in Schenectady, NY. He was later transferred to the plant in Pittsfield MA where he worked on high voltage transformers. He returned to Tufts in October 1914 to teach Math and worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the summer as an electrical inspector. He was awarded a scholarship to study acoustics at Clark University but quit since he did not like the topic. He then enrolled at MIT and completed PhD in Engineering (joint degree from MIT and Harvard University).

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During World War I, Bush worked for the National Research Council, trying to find a way to detect submarines by measuring the disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field. (It only worked on wooden ships, not on metal one, hence the device was not useful at all). He took a position at MIT in 1919, and was appointed to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1938 (the ancestor of NASA). In 1940, reflecting upon the poor cooperation between civilian scientists and the military in World War I, he proposed the creation of the National Defense Research Committee. He managed to get an appointment with FDR, and presented his proposal on a single page of paper. Within 15 minutes, FDR simply signed “OK FDR” on the sheet, creating the agency.

Bush was critical in getting the United States to undertake the Manhattan project. When the NDRC was formed, the Committee on Uranium was placed under it, reporting directly to Bush. Throughout the project, Bush was always in charge. He even chose the army, instead of the navy, to provide support to the project. He briefed Roosevelt on the progress of the project. Knowing that MIT & Harvard trained incredible scientists, Bush recruited from among their ranks.

A large portion of wartime research was still conducted at the universities, hence why Bush was aware of upcoming top scientists at the time. For example, scientists at MIT worked on microwave research for defense purposes, and the Radiation Laboratory helped accelerate radar developments. He also launched projects across the nation, with the camp at Los Alamos leading nuclear weapon development.

Malcolm in Boston Malcolm X, then called Malcolm Little, was living in Boston during the early years of the war. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska on May 19, 1925. His father was from Georgia, and had followed the Great Migration to Nebraska. His mother was born in Grenada. His father had some run ins with the KKK, and was killed when Malcolm was 6. His mother was in and out of hospitals (due to mental breakdowns), and the children were separated between foster homes. Malcolm was a school drop-out (a teacher told him that his aspirations to become a lawyer were not realistic for a Black person). He moved from Michigan to Boston in 1941, and lived with his half-sister Ella who lived in Roxbury. She enrolled him at an all-boys academy in downtown Boston without his consent. Ella was unfortunately not a stable mother figure for Malcolm in Boston.

During this time, the South End and Roxbury were less segregated than today. It was home to a large number of Lithuanians, Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians. Malcolm felt that the Black Bostonians who lived around him were high class and well educated compared to members of the Black community that he had known previously. He could already see the division between Black people living in Boston (immigrants/migrants vs native Bostonians).

Second Great Migration At the time of Malcolm’s arrival in the city, the Second Wave of the Great Migration had just begun. This wave lasted from the 1940s (due to the war contracts) to the 1960s (leading to the

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formation of highly segregated Black communities in large urban centers). Looking at the map, you can see that this wave is not solely concentrated on the East coast. Instead, it also included a push toward the West.

Unlike their First wave counterparts, who were mostly rural people living in the South, most of the migrants in the second wave of the Great Migration were urban migrants and were skilled workers. They sought jobs in the War industry especially after the federal government ordered the desegregation of all companies receiving war contracts.

Back to Malcolm There are many more details as to what Malcolm did in Boston and what was around him in the optional reading for this week. What is important is that Malcolm had encounters with the law during his time in Boston. At the time, he was a bit of a hooligan. He wore a zoot suit, straightened his hair with chemicals, and was obsessed with Jazz music. He dated a white woman named Bea Caragulian while in Boston. He worked as a soda jerk at the Townsend Pharmacy in Roxbury (look it up if you do not know what a soda jerk is!). He opposed the draft, and got himself disqualified by saying that he planned on killing white people once outfitted with a weapon. Due to the fact that a large number of white men left for the front, Malcolm found a job as a cook on a train between Boston and Washington DC. He was then transferred to the Yankee Clipper, which ran the New York - Boston route. He stopped in Harlem every time that he could.

In late 1945, he returned to Boston, where he and four accomplices committed a series of burglaries targeting wealthy white families. In 1946, he was arrested while picking up a stolen watch he had left at a shop for repairs, and in February began serving an eight-to-ten-year sentence at Charlestown State Prison for larceny and breaking and entering. In prison, he converted to the Nation of Islam, and changed his name to Malcolm X then to el-Hajj Malik el- Shabazz. He was paroled in 1952. He became a leader of the mosque until he broke away in 1964 (due to divergent views with the leaders of the mosque).

Return to normalcy

The war ended in 1945. The return to normalcy was difficult, but certainly not as difficult as what we saw for World War I. This was due to good planning on the part of the government to avoid a post-war recession.

GI Bill of 1944 In 1944, the federal government passed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. The act consisted of a range of benefits for veterans who came back from the war.

• tuition and living expenses when attending high school, college, or vo-tech school. • low cost mortgages • low interest loans to start a business • unemployment compensation for one year at the return to civilian life.

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The program was available to veterans who had been on active duty for at least 90 days and had not been dishonorably discharged. The Bill was a political and economic success. It helped create a solid educated middle-class in the United States through the tuition and living expenses offered to returning soldiers, and allowed them to move to better neighborhoods.

Return to domesticity The creation of the middle-class was possible through the return of society toward the male breadwinner/stay-at-home-mom model. Women had taken on men’s jobs during the war. After the end of the war, society put a lot of pressure on women to return home. Society, through ads, tv & radio shows, etc, reemphasize the model of the male breadwinner as the standard American model. To be a good middle class family, American families needed to abide by the model (similar to the separation of the spheres in the 19th century).

With the benefits that men received from the war, and the attention paid to the nation’s economic health, employers emphasized the fact that men should be able to take care of their family alone (i.e. more than living wage). There was a pressure on employers to provide salaries high enough so that women did not need to work to help make ends meet. As a result, women were no longer needed in the workforce, and they could embrace the domesticity characteristic of the middle- class family.

Baby Boom As a result, men did not need a long period of time to establish themselves. With the mortgage benefits for example, they could buy a house at really good price at an early age. The age at first marriage dropped, and the number of children per family increases drastically. This was the beginning of the baby boom (babies born between 1945 and 1965). There was a slight problem though. The question was no longer how you would raise your family but where did you want to raise your family?

Large Suburbanization push In the 1950s, across the nation, there was a large push for suburbanization. In areas like New York State, for example, developers begin projects like Levittown. Levittowns were planned communities built between 1947 and 1951. The communities were planned ahead of time, in terms of road, model of houses, accessibility, or who could live there. Levittowns were exclusively white.

The sale contracts were written in a way that prevented African Americans from moving into the neighborhoods. Levittowns were planned segregated neighborhoods. Developers constructed small homes, all built in the same model with very little variation, built on similar size lands, with a white picket fence. They were inexpensive places to live (for example, a house could be built for $6,000-$8,000 which is the equivalent of $65-85,000 in today’s money). This led to the creation of “suburbia.”

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Change in the city The Greater Boston area also developed during that period of time as the region also went through its own push toward suburbanization. Between 1920 and 1950, the population of the city increases only by 7%, compared to 67% in the decades that preceded it.

• 1920 -> 748,060 -> increase of 11.6% • 1930 -> 781,188 -> increase of 4.4% • 1940 -> 770,816 -> decrease of 1.3% • 1950 -> 801,444 -> increase of 4.0% • 1960 -> 697,197 -> decrease of 13.0% • 1970 -> 641,071 -> decrease of 8.1%

For the most part the population make up remained the same for the first decade after the war.

(Numbers from and racial categories defined by the U.S. Census Department)

With the suburbanization, a large portion of white Bostonians left the city. As they left, the housing market lost in value (see maps of the city). This triggered an internal migration where African Americans left the South End, where they used to live in the first half of the century, and moved to the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhoods. It is important to note that most residents of Roxbury and Dorchester at the time of the migration were Jewish people. (We will be back to this in a minute)

Boston’s population became more diverse from the 1950s on, especially with the migration of people coming from Puerto Rico, Dominical Republic, Columbia, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Ecuador. Upon their arrival, they faced challenges similar to other immigrants: language barrier, poverty, lived in the same neighborhoods where other immigrants had lived before them. A large portion lived in Black neighborhoods because of segregation.

After 1943, when the Chinese Exclusion Act and its successor acts were abolished, the Chinese immigration to Boston started again. Chinatown expanded and developed. As you can see from the pictures in the slides, the first point of contact between white Bostonians and Chinese immigrants were often through restaurants. Chinese merchant associations became more prominent in the city, and served as pillars in community organizing.

Year White Black Asian Native Americans

Hispanic or Latino

2015 52.9 % 25.3 % 9.4 % 0.4 % 19.5 %

1990 62.8 % 25.6 % 5.3 % 0.3 % 10.8 %

1970 81.8 % 16.3 % 1.3 % 0.2 % 2.8 %

1940 96.7 % 3.1 % 0.2 % — 0.1 %

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Jewish and African American relations The migration of African Americans in Roxbury and Dorchester posed very little problem to the existing Jewish community. Everywhere in the nation, as a general rule, when African Americans moved to white Catholic neighborhoods, they faced an increase in racial violence toward them. When they moved to Jewish neighborhoods across the nation, there was rarely a problem of violence. In Roxbury and Dorchester, Black residents shopped at Jewish-owned businesses, Jews shopped at Black-owned businesses.

Especially after the Second World War, and especially due to the context of the Holocaust, both groups worked together through bi-racial organizations to address racial discrimination and anti- semitism. In the 1950s, Jews left Roxbury and Dorchester as they could afford better houses in prettier neighborhoods. They moved to Brookline (where members of the community had moved during the first push for suburbanization), Newton, and Deadham. Some move further out of the Greater Boston area for example to Sharon, Medford, Lexington, Arlington, Belmont, Watertown, Framingham, Natick, Randolph, Hull, Milton, Swampscott, and Marblehead. The low cost of housing in those areas is especially important in attracting Jewish families.

Great Migration The suburbanization was amplified by the arrival of large number of African Americans through the Great Migration. If you remember, well throughout the first half of the 20th century, African Americans only represented 2% of the total city population. During the Great Migration, nearly 5 million Black Southerners moved to the North, Midwest, and the West. As I mentioned earlier, the majority of these migrants were urban folks and a large part were skilled workers. Since the defense industry was desegregated through Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8802 in 1941, they found jobs in the defense industry. A large number of them come to Boston because of the educational and work opportunities that the city offered.

During the Great Migration, the Black population increases substantially

• 1940 -> 23,679 for a total of 3.1% of the city’s population • 1950 -> 40,057 for a total of 5 % of the city’s population • 1960 -> 63,165 for a total of 9.1% of the city’s population • 1970 -> 104,707 for a total of 16.3 % of the city’s population

Urban Renewal As Americans readjust to normalcy, the federal government launched what we called the “Urban Renewal.” Truman, during the deployment of his Fair Deal, noticed that “Five million families [were] still living in slums and firetraps. Three million families share[d] their homes with others.” Remember that there was a push for the standard American family with the mother staying at home, the family having a certain lifestyle, the home, the picket fence, etc. According to the research conducted in the United States at the time, there was an acute housing shortage across the nation. Developments built by private developers like Levitt were completed without

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public subsidies. Although they were cheap houses, they remained inaccessible to the working- class.

As a result, The Truman Administration passed the Housing Act of 1949 which contained the following provisions:

• providing federal financing for slum clearance programs associated with urban renewal projects in American cities (Title I)

• increasing authorization for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance (Title II)

• extending federal money to build more than 800,000 public housing units (Title III) • fund research into housing and housing techniques, and • permitting the FHA to provide financing for rural homeowners.

Boston received a share of the money allocated under the Housing Act of 1949. However, things got really complicated.

Boston in 1950 In 1949, John Hynes runs against James Michael Curley for Mayor of Boston. Hynes was born in Boston in 1897. His parents were from Ireland, and came to the city in 1890. Hynes graduated from Suffolk University Law School in 1927. He was city clerk under James Michael Curley during Curley’s 1946-1950 term. Hynes took over as acting mayor when Curly served a 5-month sentence in prison in 1947 for official misconduct. He challenged Curley in the 1949 election.

His campaign slogan was a “New Boston.” The city population had dropped by approximately 100,000 people in 1950. The city had never recovered from the downturn of the economy experienced in the 1930s, and was still losing in vitality. The textile industry was losing steam. In 1947, the industry hired 280,000 workers. That number dropped to 170,000 in 1954, and then to 99,000 in 1960. Because a large portion of Boston’s money financed the failing mills, the city’s financial health was endangered.

Boston slowly lost its financial market status, and the fishing industry was declining. The city continued its slow transformation from a manufacturing-based to a service-based city. With the advent of air conditioning in the 1940s and 1950s, a lot of people move from the East Coast to the West Coast, thus draining the city of a number of its industries. So by 1950, Boston is in dire need of renewal and revitalization.

Urban Renewal in Boston When the Housing Act of 1949 passed, Boston was one of the cities that took advantage of the money. Boston Housing Authority was designated as the local public authority meant to administer the funds. Planning officials prepared the “General Plan for Boston” which proposed to redevelop 20% of the city’s land in 25 years. The plan, despite all the research that went into it, did not take into consideration the residents of the city.

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The project proposed to demolish the West End, an old immigrant neighborhood, and to replace it with an upper-income enclave of apartment buildings that many considered ugly. It was in line with the urban renewal trend: cities demolished what they consider to be a blight, and replaced it with high scale apartments meant to attract upper income people (and their money).

The Boston Housing Authority applied for federal funding in 1950 for the clearance project. The study began the next year, and in April 1953, the city announced the plan to “redevelop” the West End (i.e. destroy and rebuild). The federal and state governments approved the final plan in 1956, and by July 1957 the city council and the mayor approved the project. Shortly after the approval was given, the Boston Housing Authority surrendered its authority to the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) which started to hold informal hearings in October 1957.

Despite tremendous opposition to the West End plan, the BRA felt that the project had gone too far to stop it at this point. The city and the government signed contracts to start the project in January 1958. The city provided ⅓ of the money and the federal government provided ⅔ of it. The city gave West End residents notice of demolition plans in April 1958. By November 1,200 out of the 2,700 households had evacuated. More residents moved in 1959 and early 1960, the last ones leaving over the summer of 1960. From there on, the neighborhood was completely razed (see pictures in the slides). Walter Muir Whitehill, a historian who worked at Harvard from 1951 to 1972, pointed out that the BRA did not make a lot of friends out of the Renewal project because “it brutally displaced people, disrupted neighborhoods, and destroyed pleasing buildings.”

They demolished over 900 buildings. The only building that still stands from the period is the building located at 42 Lomasney Way. The building looks like it defied the city by standing there! The BRA only paid a total $320,000 for moving expenses and personal property loss of ALL those evicted (2,700 households).

Once the people were out, the city put the land out for bid so that contractors could propose different use options. Rappaport, one of Hynes organizers, won the bid. He was a student at Harvard when he put together the New Boston project. Despite his connections, Rappapport had difficult getting the funding for the project. After being turned down by several banks, the John Hancock Life Insurance Company finally agreed to back his proposed Charles River Park Development.

Charles River Park Development Rappaport commissioned Victor Green to design the Charles River Park. The idea behind the project was to create “an urban village.” He wanted to counteract the dominance of the automobile and still attract suburbanites to the area. The first residents moved in 1962. Low income residents who had previously lived in the neighborhood could not even dream of living in the development. The apartments were high-end luxury housing and out of their reach.

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City Hall City Hall was another eyesore. The new building was designed by a Columbia University professor and his students. They won a two stage competition in 1962. The building is an example of Brutalism or Brutalist Architecture (other buildings like the Fine Arts Center or the Campus center at UMass are also examples of this type of architecture). In the 1960s, then- Mayor John F. Collins reportedly gasped as the design was first unveiled, and someone in the room blurted out, "What the hell is that?" You can imagine how popular it was. (There was an article on Brutalism on WBUR recently. Here is the link http://www.wbur.org/artery/2017/07/31/ brutalist-boston-map)

John F. Fitzgerald Expressway The last eyesore that I want to discuss is the construction of the Central Artery, the John F. Kennedy Expressway. Like City Hall, the finished Expressway was highly unpopular. It did not take long for it to receive several nicknames:

“The Distressway,” “the largest parking lot in the world,” and “the other Green Monster”

The plan for an elevated highway had been in the works since the 1920s. The above-ground Artery was built in two sections. The first section was from High Street and Broad Street to the Tobin Bridge. The second section was the Dewey Square Tunnel.

The John F. Fitzgerald Expressway was part of the Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System (Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways) which was a Cold War construction project. It was meant to allow for the easier transport of troops and military vehicles from one side of the country to the other.

The construction of the Expressway was authorized under the Federal High Way Act of 1956. However, the highway cut off the North End and the City’s waterfront from the rest of Boston, and only a decade after its construction, planners began to dream of tearing it down and replacing it with a tunnel between North and South Station. This particular tunnel idea was never implemented.

What were the consequences of the urban redevelopment? The West End was razed because of the neighborhood was seen as a blight. Overall, it was a typical neighborhood for a city like Boston, but the city had stopped collecting garbage and cleaning the streets. So, of course the neighborhood looked like a mess, but there were also structural issues keeping it that way.

People were impoverished in the process. Many building owners were not adequately compensated for their property. Due to city law, as soon as tenement buildings were condemned by the BRA, the city became the legal owner. This meant that building owners had no income as rent was paid directly to the city. Soon owners became desperate to sell their property at severely reduced prices.

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Instead of creating more housing, the city reduced the number of apartments available in the neighborhood. For example, 2700 households had been displaced, and only 477 apartments constructed. Overall, the city lost more apartments than it gained.

Between one quarter and one half of the former residents were relocated to substandard housing with higher rents than they were previously paying. Forty percent of the people who were relocated suffered from long-term trauma because of the move. Later on, scientists created studies based on the long-term traumatic effects of this project.

The new neighborhood remained predominantly white, pushing any minorities to other areas of the city. One third of the city center had been destroyed. The Renewal affected 3,223 acres and more than 50 percent of the population. If you couple this with the suburbanization, the city became more and more segregated.

Formation of the “Ghetto” The Urban removal was nicknamed “black removal” because it pushed Black Bostonians out of sight. Discrimination in the newly constructed developments prevented Black residents from living in their old neighborhood, like the West End (notwithstanding their income level). Urban renewal of other neighborhoods, like the South End, for example, dislodged Black families from their historical neighborhood. New white middle-class families moved to the neighborhood where Black Bostonians had been established since before the Civil War (gentrification). The loss of cheap housing pushed Black residents more intently toward Roxbury and Dorchester, where the community had already been moving.

City authorities started to illegally redline the city. As a result, only Black people could get mortgages in Mattapan. Bankers forced Jews out of the neighborhood through this unscrupulous method. Black residents bought homes in Mattapan at higher mortgage costs, which were too high for them to pay, and foreclosures became more and more common. The neighborhood decayed and became a ghetto.

Conditions By 1960, only 47% of all non-white occupied housing in Boston was considered “sound,” compared to 78% of all-white occupied housing. Thirty-seven percent of non-white occupied dwellings were considered in a “deteriorating state,” and ten percent in a “dilapidated” state, compared to thirteen and two percent of white-occupied housing respectively. In addition, nearly thirty-two percent of the remaining apartments were considered “substandard” units since they lacked indoor plumbing.

To add insult to the injury, Black Bostonians who rented these units usually paid more for them. Sixty-two percent of Black renters paid over sixty dollars a month for their lease, compared to forty-four percent of their white counterparts.

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Black workers slowly made occupational gains into semi-skilled and skilled manual labor jobs and then into clerical jobs. However, while they made progress, their income level in comparison to whites dropped. Most also had absent landlords who did not take care of the buildings, hence contributing to the decrepitude of the neighborhood.

This led to the creation of what Civil Rights activists called the Black Boomerang. We will discuss more of this housing discrimination soon.

Beginning of the School situation Because of the migration, both within and coming to the city, issues emerged with the school system. In 1950, Muriel Snowden, a civil rights activist started to pick up on the problem. One day, she called the school to talk to the principal, and recognized her daughter’s voice on the phone. What happened was that Gail (who was 6 or 7 at the time) had finished her class work. Since the teacher did not have extra books or supplemental material for her to work on, she sent Gail to the principal’s office to answer phones instead.

Muriel decided that she was not going to let that kind of situation become the norm at the school. She tried to get involved in the Home and School Association (parents association) but could not. At the time, the Principal, Miss Cloney, was trying to keep Black parents out of the organization. (You have to remember that that being part of the Home and School Association would give parents a say in the school system). In order to keep the power in her own hands, she tried to rally the Jewish parents to her cause by telling them that the Black students would lower the school standards. Muriel continued to push. Miss Cloney decided that she had had enough. Instead of letting parents elect the head of the Home And School Association as per tradition, she appointed herself as the chair. Frictions continued between her and the Snowdens to the point where Cloney accused Otto and Muriel Snowden of being communists.

The Second Red Scare Accusing someone of being a communist was not a joke in the early 1950s. A Second Red Scare took place between 1947 and 1956. The second Red Scare originated with President Truman's Executive Order 9835 of March 21, 1947. The Executive Order required that all federal civil service employees be screened for “loyalty.” It specified that one criterion to be used in determining that “reasonable grounds exist for belief that the person involved is disloyal” would be a finding of “membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association” with any organization determined by the attorney general to be “totalitarian, Fascist, Communist or subversive” or advocating or approving the forceful denial of constitutional rights to other persons or seeking “to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means.”

On a side note, this type of “subversive” behavior also applied to homosexuality. Employers could dismiss anyone suspected to be homosexual at the time. Homosexuality became a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1952. It was removed as a disorder in 1973.

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In 1947, Joseph McCarthy became a senator in Wisconsin and capitalized on that fear. Beginning in 1950, he became more and more vocal about communist subversion. He began to attack a lot of public figures. The term McCarthyism was coined that year to talk about all types of anti- communist activities. During the same years 1947 on, Congress held hearings under the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) asking people if they had communist ties.

So if we come back to the Snowdens, it was particularly frightening to be accused of being Communists, especially at a time where African Americans faced increased racial discrimination in the city. However, while the Snowdens were NOT communists, the principal was onto something. Another parent who was friends with the Snowdens had been a member of the Communist party for years.

Anne Burlak Timpson Anne Burlak Timpspn was born on May 1911, in Slatington Pennsylvania. She was the oldest of six children of Ukrainian immigrants. She wanted to become a teacher but had to drop out of school at age 14 to help her family. She had to lie about her age to be able to work at the local textile mill (the legal age to work as 16 the time). She became a member of the Young Communist League in 1927 when working at the mill. The organizing gave her a whole new vision and purpose in life. In 1928, she became a delegate in the founding convention of the National Textile Workers Union. She tried to organize the mill in her hometown but was fired. Every time that she tried to organize her fellow mill workers, she lost her job. She was arrested in 1929 and charged for spreading Communist Propaganda under the state sedition law. Burlak decided that if she was going to be charged “for Communist ideas under the Sedition law, [she] might as well join the Communist Party and learn more about it.”

In the 1930s, she was sent to Georgia by the NTWU to organize workers. On 21 May 1930, she and five others were arrested for insurrection against the state of Georgia because they addressed an interracial audience of unemployed workers. A conviction could have carried the death penalty. Burlak and the other five members of the “Atlanta Six” were held incommunicado for six weeks before their lawyers won them the right to bail. Burlak was the first one freed, and she traveled around the country raising money for the others' bail and for their defense under auspices of International Labor Defense. Anne Burlak returned to the North and organized workers in the mills of Rhode Island and New Bedford, Fall River and Lawrence, Massachusetts. It was during the 1931-32 Lawrence textile strike that she acquired the nickname, “The Red Flame.”

In 1932, her parents and brothers returned to the Ukraine. She went to Moscow to attend the Lenin Institute in 1936. It was the last time she saw her entire family. Her father died of starvation during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in 1943, and she did not see her mother or brothers again until 1961. In the following years, she ran for mayor of Pawtucket RI on the Communist Party ticket, she raised money for the Scottsboro boys defense (they had been wrongly accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama), and ran for other offices.

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By Second World War, she was living in Boston, and had become an activist in the city. She fought against the closure of the federally funded wartime day care centers in 1945-1946. In 1946, she edited the Roxbury Voice, a newsletter issued by the Communist party. Many Communist Party leaders were arrested under the Smith Act during the summer of 1951, right after the altercation with Miss Cloney. With her movements being followed by the FBI, Anne Burlak Timpson stayed away from her home for eight months hoping to avoid arrest, leaving her daughter with good friends, first in Kansas City, Missouri and then Roxbury; once school started again, she left her son with friends in Boston.

Although she managed to avoid arrest during the early part of the decade, Anne Burlak Timpson was indicted under the Massachusetts Anti-Anarchy Law and in March 1956 she was arrested with six others for violating the Smith Act. After the Supreme Court ruled in the Steve Nelson case that only the United States government could prosecute such cases, the charges stemming from the state anarchy law were dropped. The Smith Act trial was delayed until the Supreme Court made a decision in a California Smith Act case. When the California defendants were acquitted, the case against the seven in Massachusetts was dropped as well. (We will continue the Snowden’s battles with the education system in the next module!)

Conclusion The 1950s was a period of conformity. After the demobilization, men took advantage of the GI bill as a means to rise into the middle-class. People married younger, women were pushed back toward domesticity, and families had more children. With their families growing, Bostonians decide to move toward the suburb.

The city experienced both internal and external migrations. The Great Migration, the suburbanization, and later the Urban Renewal, created the perfect conditions for the formation of a ghetto. The ghettoization of the Black community subsequently led to segregation of the city schools. While some parents wanted to democratize the school system, the old guard, white principals and school committee members, did not want to share the power.

Boston like all other cites experienced a Red Scare in the post-war period.