Tag: 20th Century

Women’s Groups Remaking Boston (episode 150)

This week’s show dusts off two classic stories about times in Boston history when women’s volunteer organizations had a big impact on Boston.  First, we’ll talk about the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association, whose members introduced the concept of a playground to the American public in late 19th century Boston.  Then, we’ll fast forward a few decades to the 19 – teens, when the Women’ Municipal League sponsored Boston’s first (and so far only ) Rat Day. Both of these projects made valuable contributions to Boston’s quality of life, and they happened at a time when society didn’t generally approve of women’s work outside the home.


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Boston’s Rock n Roll Riots (episode 149)

Boston has never needed much of an excuse to riot.  Over almost four centuries, we’ve had political riots, racist and xenophobic riots, and plenty riots that seem to be about nothing at all.  Of all the things Bostonians could choose to riot over, a rock and roll show might just be the most frivolous of all.  And yet Boston, like many other cities, has a rich history of riots and near-riots at rock concerts.  If you take enough excited young people and pack them into a tight enough space, with with enough hormones (and quite possibly booze or drugs) coursing through their veins, it doesn’t take much of a spark to set off the powderkeg.  From Chuck Berry to Led Zeppelin, and from the Rolling Stones to Green Day, we’re looking into the causes and consequences of some of the most iconic melees in Boston’s rock and roll history.


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Mayor Curley’s Plan to Ban the Klan (episode 148)

In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan expanded into New England and tried to make Boston a capital of their invisible empire.  However, their deep hatred for Catholics and Jews, as well as their promotion of “100% Americanism,” made the KKK a hard sell in an area where the population was growing rapidly, with a constant stream of Jewish and Catholic immigrants.  After staying on the sidelines at first, Boston’s colorful mayor James Michael Curley made it his mission to drive the KKK out of Boston. After a few highly publicized Klan rallies in and around Boston, Curley began to fight them with rhetoric and questionably legal manipulation of the city permitting process.


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Aeroplane Fever (episode 144)

Sky Jockeys, Knights of the Air, and Man-Birds were just a few of the terms that newspapers around the country used to describe the early aviators who converged on Boston in September 1910.  The first Harvard-Boston Aero Meet was the largest and most exciting air show that the world had ever seen, and it left Boston gripped by a bad case of aeroplane fever.  Famous pilots from the US and around the world, including even Wilbur Wright, would compete for cash prizes in a number of categories, including a high-stakes race to Boston Light in the outer harbor.  Tens of thousands of spectators gawked at the spectacle, reporters provided breathless coverage, and the military watched carefully to see if these newfangled flying machines could ever be useful in warfare.  The event was so successful that the organizers extended it by three days beyond what was originally scheduled, then followup meets were scheduled for the next two years.


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The Cessna Strafer (episode 142)

This week, our show brings you  the story of what might be the only example of someone “going postal” in the air.  We’re discussing a bizarre 1989 incident involving a North Shore man, a veteran and postal worker.  Alfred J Hunter III had always wanted to be a pilot, and thirty years ago this summer, he got the chance.  He murdered his ex-wife, stole a plane at gunpoint, and then flew around shooting up the city of Boston with an assault rifle.  


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Fifteen Blocks of Rage (episode 140)

For decades, a 1967 riot that rocked Roxbury’s Grove Hall neighborhood was generally referred to in the mainstream media as a “race riot” or as “the welfare riot,” while a handful of articles and books by Black authors called it “the police riot.”  A group of mostly African American women who led an organization called Mothers for Adequate Welfare were staging a sit-in protest at a welfare office on Blue Hill Avenue. When tensions escalated, the police stormed in and used force to remove the group.  Onlookers were outraged by the violence and attempted to stop the police. The resulting riot spanned three nights in Roxbury, with arson, looting, and shots fired both by and at the police, and the scars it left behind took decades to heal.


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Hooker Day in Boston (episode 138)

Hooker Day was a one-time holiday celebrated in Boston in 1903.  While it might sound like this is going to be an X-rated podcast, we’re not talking about that kind of hooker.  Civil War General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker was briefly the commander of the main Union force called the Army of the Potomac.  Forty years after his command, he was immortalized with a massive statue in front of our State House. When the statue was dedicated, the entire city celebrated a holiday that was called Hooker Day in his honor.


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Love is Love: John Adams and Marriage Equality (episode 134)

15 years ago, the landmark case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health  granted marriage rights to same-sex couples in Massachusetts. The November 18, 2003, decision was the first by a U.S. state’s highest court to find that same-sex couples had the right to marry, and it was grounded in the language of equal justice that John Adams wrote into our state constitution. Despite numerous attempts to delay the ruling, and to reverse it, the first marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples on May 17, 2004.


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Marathon Women (episode 127)

The Boston Marathon was first run in April of 1897, after Bostonians were inspired by the revival of the marathon for the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. It is the oldest continuously running marathon, arguably the most prestigious, and the second longest continuously running footrace in North America, having debuted five months after the Buffalo Turkey Trot. Women were not allowed to officially enter the Boston Marathon until 1972.  In 1966, Bobbi Gibb became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. In 1967, Kathrine Switzer, who had registered as “K. V. Switzer”, became the first woman to run and finish with a race number – despite the race director’s best efforts.


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The Museum Heist (episode 126)

It’s probably a familiar tale
 Late at night, after the museum is closed, a man talks the guard into unlocking the door.  Once inside, he pulls out a gun, and within seconds, the guard is tied up and blindfolded, while a gang roams through the museum, picking out rare masterpieces.  By the time the guard gets himself free and calls the police, the gang has made off with millions of dollars in stolen artworks, in a case considered the largest art heist in US history.  Yes, the tale may sound familiar, but we’re not talking about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum case, we’re talking about a different art heist, one that was carried out 17 years earlier and across the river in Cambridge.  This is the story of the Fogg Museum coin heist.


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