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.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/236/

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Jan Brogan is an award-winning journalist and novelist living in the Boston area. She has been a staff writer for the Providence Journal and the Worcester Telegram, and her pieces have appeared in the Globe, Boston Magazine, and several magazines. When she’s wearing her novelist hat, she writes mystery novels that feature a journalist as the intrepid investigator, rather than a more traditional hardboiled detective. Her Hallie Ahern series is anchored by “a confidential source,” which has been optioned by transactional pictures for development into a TV series.

Her new nonfiction book is The Combat Zone, Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, in stores now. At the heart is a terrible crime, the 1976 stabbing of Andy Puopolo, a white Harvard football player, at the hands of a Black man who was characterized in court as a pimp. The crime took place in the Combat Zone, the nearly lawless red light district at the heart of Boston that was caught up in what Time Magazine called “the age of porno.” The case played out against the backdrop of the peak of racist violence during the busing conflict, with the trial becoming a proxy for white rage against efforts to desegregate Boston schools.

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This week we’ll explore the strange case of a 1907 shooting in Jamaica Plain. There was a gun, a gunshot, and a gunshot victim… a child, in fact. But there was no shooter, or at least no human shooter. If this was today, we might be talking about a terrifying robot machine gun, but 1907 was a little early for that. Instead, we’re talking about a deadly trap laid by a homeowner to protect his grape arbor. For setting this deadly trap, the homeowner would face criminal trial for assault, but pay only a trivial fine. As bizarre as the case sounds, it was part of a trend that was sweeping the nation at the time, with many spring gun cases arising in the Boston area, until the matter was finally settled in a state supreme court case that every first year law student still studies today.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/235/

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This week, Jake interviews Dr. Jared Ross Hardesty, author of the new book Mutiny on the Rising Sun: a tragic tale of smuggling, slavery, and chocolate, which uncovers the dark web of interconnections between Old North Church, chocolate, and chattel slavery. Dr. Hardesty will explain why a reputable sea captain would become a smuggler, trafficking in illegal chocolate and enslaved Africans; the risks an 18th century Bostonian would take to provide himself with a competence, or enough money to allow his family to live independently; and what it meant in that era to be of but not from Boston. At the heart of the story is a brutal murder and mutiny on the high seas, illustrating the fundamental brutality of life in the 18th century, but the role of the church (specifically Old North Church) in the social and economic lives of Bostonians is also central to understanding the life and death of Captain Newark Jackson.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/234/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Dr. Jared Ross Hardesty is an associate professor of history at Western Washington University, way out in Bellingham, Washington. He studies the global entanglements of colonial Boston, and is the author of two previous books exploring slavery in Boston. His Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston was our Boston Book Club pick back in episode 160, and featured a talk about Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England as our upcoming historical event in episode 162. His latest work, Mutiny on the Rising Sun: a tragic tale of smuggling, slavery, and chocolate, was published last week.

November 3, 2021 at 7pm via Old North Church: “In this talk, historian Jared Ross Hardesty recounts the origins, events, and eventual fate of the Rising Sun’s final smuggling voyage in vivid detail. That story, as told in his new book, Mutiny on the Rising Sun: A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate, was part of a multi-year, international research project that revealed the mutiny’s connection to the Old North Church. More significantly, the project uncovered an unknown part of Old North’s history: a connection to slavery and the slave trade.”

November 10, 2021 at 6pm via Boston Public Library: “Author Jared Ross Hardesty puts Old North Church under the spotlight as parishioners of the church who were formerly well-regarded and even helped pay for the famous steeple turn out to be involved in the slave trade. Captain Newark Jackson is the central figure, who was formerly honored with a chocolate shop in the North End named after him (2013–2019), but his name has now been removed from the store due to these revelations. At once startling and captivating, Mutiny on the Rising Sun shows how illegal trade created demand for exotic products like chocolate, and how slavery and smuggling were integral to the development of American capitalism.”

Come with me on a voyage around the world with the officers and crew of the ship Columbia. Formally named the Columbia Rediviva and accompanied by the sloop Lady Washington, the ship was owned by a group of prominent Bostonians and charged with opening up trade between Boston and China. Almost by accident, the Columbia became the first American ship to visit the west coast of North America, the first American ship to land in the Hawaiian islands, and the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. Over the course of five years and two expeditions, the crew completed two circumnavigations, brought the first native Hawaiian to visit Boston, and “discovered” the Columbia river (which would have been news to the dozens of villages and thousands of inhabitants on the river). The mighty river of the west had previously been thought to be a myth, and navigating up this river established US land claims in what would eventually become seven states. The Oregon Country was contested between Russia, Spain, and Britain, but the Columbia’s expedition opened it to Boston merchants, and pretty soon all American traders on the west coast were known as the Boston men.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/233/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/