Today's Black History Month bonus episode revisits my interview with Jan Brogan. In the book Combat Zone, Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, journalist Jan Brogan turns her impressive research and reporting skills on the case of Andy Puopolo, a 21 year old Harvard football player who was killed in a fight in the Combat Zone in 1976. The case would pit the most privileged group at the most privileged school in the world against three poor Black men on the margins of society, while in the background Boston tore itself apart on racial lines.

The book plumbs the depths of white, working class Boston’s racial resentments during the busing era, a criminal justice system that stacked the deck against Black defendants, and a police department that was compromised at its core by organized crime. It highlights the street violence that helped cement Boston’s reputation as the most racist city in the country, as well as the two trials that came to diametrically opposite verdicts in the same city, just a couple of years apart. It also puts the reader in the mind of the younger brother of the victim, left behind to deal with his feelings of grief and guilt, while wrestling with the possibility of revenge.

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/combat-zone-murder-race-and-bostons-struggle-for-justice-with-jan-brogan-episode-236/

Today's slightly depressing Black History Month bonus episode covers the case of Washington Goode. In 1848, a murder case nearly brought an end to the death penalty in Massachusetts. When a young black man named Washington Goode was convicted of first degree murder that year, there hadn’t been an execution in Boston for 13 years. White men who had been convicted of the same crime had their sentences commuted to a life in prison, and tens of thousands of petitions poured in asking the governor to do the same thing for Goode. Yet even so, he was sent to the gallows. Why?

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/execution-almost-killed-death-penalty-massachusetts-ep68/

Today's Black History Month bonus episode features an interview with historian Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, author of Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston. We discussed the evolution of partisanship and political loyalty among Boston’s African American community, from just after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century. It was a period that at first promised political and economic advancement for African Americans, but ended with the rise of lynching and codified Jim Crow laws. It was also a period that began with near universal support for Lincoln’s Republican party among African Americans, with Frederick Douglass commenting “the Republican party is the ship and all else is the sea.” However, after decades of setbacks and roadblocks on the path of progress, many began to question their support of the GOP, and some tried to forge a new, non-partisan path to Black advancement. Dr. Bergeson-Lockwood will tell us how the movement developed and whether it ultimately achieved its goals.

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/race-over-party-black-politics-and-partisanship-in-late-nineteenth-century-boston-with-millington-bergeson-lockwood-episode-154/

Today's Black History Month bonus episode celebrates African American inventor and draftsman Lewis Latimer. Latimer’s parents self-emancipated to give their children the opportunities afforded to those born into freedom. A Chelsea native, Latimer’s career took him from the Navy, to a patent law firm, to the prestigious circle of Thomas Edison’s pioneers.

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/lewis-latimer-master-inventor-episode-120/

Today's super depressing Black History Month bonus episode explores how Massachusetts became the first American colony to legalize slavery, and why slavery was legally practiced longer in Boston than in Texas or Mississippi. The Boston slave trade began when a ship arrived in the harbor in the summer of 1638 carrying a cargo of enslaved Africans, but there was already a history of slave ownership in the new colony. After this early experience, Massachusetts would continue to be a slave owning colony for almost 150 years. In this week’s episode, we discuss the origins of African slavery in Massachusetts and compare the experience of enslaved Africans to other forms of unfree labor in Boston, such as enslaved Native Americans, Scottish prisoners of war, and indentured servants.

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/original-sin-the-roots-of-slavery-in-boston-ep74/

Today's Black History Month bonus episode introduces the first Black Harvard Graduate. Professor Richard T Greener grew up in Boston in the shadow of the abolition movement, graduated from Harvard, and became one of the foremost Black intellectuals of his era. However, soon after publishing his most influential work, when it seemed like he would take up the mantle of Frederick Douglass, he instead sank into obscurity. He was nearly forgotten for over a century, until his legacy was rediscovered in 2009 in a discarded steamer trunk in a dusty attic on the South Side of Chicago.

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/richard-t-greener-and-the-white-problem-episode-217/

The Valentines Day Blizzard

Traffic Snarls in Adams Square (Globe)

Women not dressed for the storm (Globe)

Passengers in evening wear at North Station (Globe)

Women struggle against the wind (Leslie Jones/Herald-Traveler)

Women with the wrong shoes (Leslie Jones/Herald-Traveler)

An abandoned car buried by the storm (Leslie Jones/Herald-Traveler)

Stranded at the Copley Plaza (Globe)

A fire sleigh (Globe)

Cars abandoned in Adams Square (Globe)

Skiing on Park Street (Globe)

Stranded at North Station (Globe)

Cars abandoned on the Fellsway (Globe)

Today's super depressing Black History Month bonus episode describes the only two executions by fire in Massachusetts history. Despite what a lot of people think, the victims of the Salem witch trials were hanged, not burned at the stake. However, in the history of Massachusetts, two women were executed by burning them at the stake, one in 1681 and another in 1755. If witchcraft was a crime against both the state and God, what crime could be worse in Puritan Boston?

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/episode-27-burned-stake/

Today's Black History Month bonus episode remembers William Monroe Trotter. From his Harvard graduation in 1895 to his death in 1934, 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.

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/black-radical-the-life-and-times-of-william-monroe-trotter-with-kerri-greenidge/

Today's Black History Month bonus episode focuses on Black Boston's reaction to one of the most racist movies ever made. When “The Birth of a Nation” premiered on February 8, 1915, it almost instantly became the greatest blockbuster of the silent movie era. It featured innovative new filmmaking techniques, a revolutionary score, and it was anchored by thrilling action scenes shot on a never-before-seen scale, with thousands of actors and extras, hundreds of horses, and battlefield effects like real cannons.

“Birth of a Nation” was unapologetically racist, promoting white supremacy and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as the noble, heroic saviors of white America from the villainous clutches of evil black men bent on rape and destruction. Upon the film’s 50th anniversary in 1965, NAACP president Roy Wilkins proclaimed that all the progress that African Americans had made over the past half century couldn’t outweigh the damage done by “Birth of a Nation.”

When the film debuted in Boston in April of 1915, audience reaction was split along racial lines, with white Bostonians flocking to see the movie in record numbers, while black Bostonians organized protests and boycotts, with leaders like William Monroe Trotter attempting to have it banned in Boston.

Original show notes: http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/the-birth-of-a-nation-in-boston-episode-121/