Category: Episodes

The Last Women Jailed for Suffrage (episode 173)

On February 24, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson visited Boston on his way home from the peace conference that ended World War I, expecting to find adoring supporters.  Instead, he was greeted by members of the National Women’s Party. After a long campaign that had the 19th amendment on the verge of passing, they now blamed Wilson for dragging his feet and shifting his attention from suffrage to the peace treaty and the League of Nations.  The protesters marched to the Massachusetts State House, where they refused to disperse for the president’s arrival. 25 women were arrested and taken to the Charles Street Jail, where sixteen of them would become known as the last women to be jailed for suffrage.


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The Red Scare in Park Square (episode 172)

Draft riots are nothing new in Boston. A 1970 protest at Northeastern University over the draft and the Vietnam War devolved into a riot. In 1863, the North End was torn by a draft riot that ended with the militia firing a cannon at a crowd of mostly Irish-American men, women, and children.  We even covered a violent 1747 riot in which Bostonians resisted forced impressment into the Royal Navy. What all those incidents have in common, though, is that the rioters were opposed to the draft. The riot on July 1, 1917 was different. In that case, rioters supported the draft and focused their violence on antiwar protesters.


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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.


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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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Trunk Tragedy in the City of Shoes (episode 169)

In February 1879, Jennie Clarke’s body was found jammed into a leather trunk on the bank of the Saugus river on her 20th birthday. Every detail of the case reveals yet another tragedy in the life of Jennie Clarke, who died after attempting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, and it reveals the unexpectedly permissive approach of Massachusetts law to abortion in the mid-1800s.  


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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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John Brown’s Body (episode 166)

The most popular song of the Union Army during the Civil War was inspired by the most hated man in America, it borrowed the tune from an old church hymn, and it was first sung right here in the Boston Harbor Islands.  In this week’s episode, learn about the double meaning behind the title of the song, its holy and profane lyrics, and the tragic history of the “Hallelujah Regiment” who made it famous.  The 12th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment marched out of Boston in 1861 with 1040 men and a song in their hearts, but when they returned three years later, they numbered just 85, and they had vowed never to sing their famous song again. 


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The 1689 Uprising in Boston, revisited (episode 165)

Early one April morning, the people of Boston rose up in revolt against the royal government of Massachusetts.  Militia marched in the streets, while an alarm brought more armed men from towns all over the area. Soon, the rebels controlled the mainland, while the royal navy still commanded the harbor.  You might think I mean the “shot heard ‘round the world” that started the American Revolution in Lexington. Instead, we’re talking about the 1689 Boston revolt, when the people rose up and overthrew their royal governor, 86 years and one day before the battles at Lexington and Concord.  


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Classic Tales from Early Boston (episode 164)

In lieu of a brand new story, this week we are sharing two classic tales from the earliest years of Puritan Boston.  One of them might be considered comedy, while the other is high drama. First, we’ll visit the diaries of Boston founder John Winthrop and find two accounts of unexplained lights in the sky and other phenomena that might have been the first UFO sightings in Boston.  After that, we’ll fast forward to the era of the English Civil Wars, when two men who had signed the death warrant for a king decided that Boston was the only safe refuge from his heir’s assassins.


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