From his Harvard graduation in 1895 to his death in 1934, William Monroe Trotter was one of the most influential and uncompromising advocates for the rights of Black Americans. He was a leader who had the vision to co-found groups like the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, but he also had an ego that prevented him from working effectively within the movements he started. He was a critic of Booker T Washington, and an early ally of Marcus Garvey. Monroe Trotter was the publisher of the influential Black newspaper the Boston Guardian, and he is the subject of a new biography by Tufts Professor Kerri Greenidge called Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter.
Tag: interview
The Bloody Flux of 1775, with Judy Cataldo (episode 181)
In the late summer of 1775, a terrible epidemic struck Boston, and much of New England. As the Revolutionary War heated up, and the siege of Boston reached its peak, both armies faced an invisible enemy. Judy Cataldo will join us on the show this week to explain the disease that was known at the time as the bloody flux. Today, we might know it better by the name dysentery or shigella. The bloody flux was a diarrheal disease that took a terrible toll on the region’s children, but now it’s barely remembered, as it’s overshadowed by a smallpox outbreak of the same year.
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Ghosts and Shadows of Automobile Row, with Ken Liss (episode 180)
In the early 20th century, car dealerships, tire companies, parts distributors, and other related businesses lined a section of Commonwealth Avenue in Allston that was known as Automobile Row, a sort of urban forefather of the suburban Auto Mile today. Local historian Ken Liss joins the show to tell us what made these early dealerships special, who some of the personalities behind Automobile Row were, and where you can see traces of this history today.
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Dr. Thomas Young, the Forgotten Revolutionary, with Scott Nadler (episode 179)
Doctor Thomas Young was a native of New York’s Hudson Valley who seemed to be present at all of Boston’s revolutionary events, from the creation of the committee of correspondence, to the Boston Massacre, to the Tea Party. He had been an early and influential friend of Ethan Allen, and he was a critic of established religious practice at the time. Though he died early in the Revolutionary War, he was instrumental to the revolutionary movements in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Strategy consultant and independent researcher Scott Nadler will explain who Thomas Young was and why he is a forgotten revolutionary today.
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Puritan Countermagic Revisited (episode 178)
Built in 1637, the Fairbanks House in Dedham is the oldest building in Massachusetts and the oldest wood-framed building in North America. It was occupied by the members of the Fairbanks family for nearly 300 years. In this interview from August 2018, Fairbanks House curator Dan Neff shares evidence he’s uncovered showing that generations of residents, perhaps spanning hundreds of years, used charms and hex marks in an attempt to ward off evil forces that might have included witches, demons, and even disease. That doesn’t mean that the family was irreligious, because belief in magic could actually be reinforced by 17th century Puritan beliefs, which said that the devil was a literal presence in the world that was trying to harm them physically and spiritually, by afflicting them with disease or diverting them from righteousness.
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Remembering the Boston Massacre, with Nat Sheidley (episode 174)
March 5th marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, when a party of British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians, killing five. It was a terrible personal tragedy in a small town of 15,000 residents, and it almost immediately became politicized. Nat Sheidley, the president and CEO of Revolutionary Spaces, is going to remind us what happened on that terrible night, how tightly intertwined the lives of the soldiers and town residents were at the time, and how every generation reinterprets what the tragedy means.
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Little Women in Boston (episode 171)
You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband when you’ve met Jo March. The same could be said of Louisa May Alcott, in which case you may not take a husband at all, choosing instead to paddle your own canoe. It has been said that, with the penning of the semi-autobiographical novel Little Women, Alcott launched the notion of the of the All American Girl. With both Sewall and Quincy ancestry, a sharp mind coupled with a determination to succeed, and a life guided by progressive values, Alcott herself was certainly an All Boston Girl. Learn about Louisa May Alcott’s long journey to overnight success, and hear how Sirena Abalian portrays Jo in the Wheelock Family Theater’s production of Little Women, the Musical.
The Millen Gang Machine Gun Murders (episode 170)
86 years ago today, on February 2, 1934, the first murders were committed in Massachusetts using a fully automatic weapon. Sadly, the victims were the first police officers to be killed in the line of duty in the sleepy Boston suburb of Needham. At the center of the case were a stolen Tommy gun, a pair of brothers, and a ragtag assortment of followers. Before it was all over, the Millen-Faber gang would be tied to at least five murders, a long string of robberies, and an attempted jailbreak. Three of the crew would be sentenced to death, and the shocking spectacle of military grade weapons being used on the streets of a quiet Boston suburb would stoke the already raging debate about gun control and the 1934 federal firearms act.
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Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement, with Barbara Berenson (episode 168)
Author Barbara F. Berenson joins us this week to discuss her book Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers. She’s also the author of Boston in the Civil War: Hub of the Second Revolution, and Walking Tours of Civil War Boston: Hub of Abolitionism. In the interview, she tells us about the critical roles that Massachusetts women played in the fight for women’s right to vote and step fully into the public sphere.
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The Hub of the Gay Universe, with Russ Lopez (episode 167)
Dr. Russ Lopez joins us this week to discuss his recent book, The Hub of the Gay Universe: An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond. Russ called in from a vacation in California to talk about Puritan attitudes toward sin and sodomy, the late 19th century golden age for LGBTQ Boston, the tragic toll of the AIDS crisis, and the long fight for marriage equality.
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