Tag: Abolitionism

A Light Under the Dome, with Patrick Gabridge (episode 307)

This week, Patrick Gabridge joins us to talk about his new play “A Light Under the Dome,” which opens at the Massachusetts State House on August 12. The first in a series of works exploring the intersection between abolition and suffrage in the 19th and early 20th centuries, A Light Under the Dome recreates a specific moment in history that took place under the dome of the Massachusetts State House 186 years ago. Angelina Grimke grew up in Charleston, South Carolina in a family of enslavers, witnessing the cruelty of America’s peculiar institution under her own roof. Leaving her comfortable life behind, she risked threats and acts of violence to become a radical abolitionist. Listen to this conversation with Patrick to learn how she got invited to speak to the Massachusetts legislature, why her address was groundbreaking, and how she tied the cause of abolition to the novel idea of rights for women.


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The Gentlemen’s Mob (episode 260)

19th Century Boston was a riotous town, and in past episodes, we’ve examined everything from anti-draft riots to anti-catholic riots to anti-immigrant riots that took place in this city in the 19th century.  The incident on Washington Street on October 21, 1835 was different, however.  Where most of Boston’s 19th century riots erupted from street violence among and directed by the working classes, the mob’s attack on the Female Anti Slavery Society and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was led by a group characterized as “gentlemen of property and influence.”  Enraged by the audacity of radical calls for immediate abolition, this mob of respectable gentlemen broke down the doors, scattered members of the Female Anti Slavery Society, nearly lynched William Lloyd Garrison, and inspired abolitionist leader Maria Chapman to exclaim, “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere!”


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Reading David Walker’s Appeal: The Pen as the Sword (episode 240)

This week, we’re trying something a little bit different.  This fall and winter, the Old North Church historic site has been hosting a series of conversations about radical Black abolitionist David Walker, and his book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.  As part of their Digital Speaker Series, education director Catherine Matthews moderated a discussion between artist, educator, and activist L’Merchie Frazier and playwright Peter Snoad on December 15.  This edition focused on the text of the Appeal as a piece of rhetoric that pointed out the brutality and hypocrisy of slavery and urged the enslaved to rebel by any means necessary.  Thanks to our friends at Old North for allowing us to share this panel with you.


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Boston’s Railroad Jubilee (episode 203)

In September 1851, Boston threw an enormous party, a party big enough to span three days.  After 15 years of development, the railroad network centered on Boston stretched out in every direction, linking the port of Boston to the American Midwest and the interior of Canada, with the Cunard line’s steamers giving access to markets in England.  To celebrate the new era of railroading, the city threw a grand Railroad Jubilee and invited President Millard Fillmore, the Governor General of Canada, and dignitaries from all over the country.  Besides commerce and steam locomotives, this episode will highlight a growing split within the Whigs old political party; Boston’s ever-present competition with New York City; and the seemingly unavoidable rush toward a civil war over the question of slavery.

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Boston Goes to Bleeding Kansas (episode 195)

Bleeding Kansas was a deadly guerrilla war between so-called Border Ruffians from Missouri in support of slavery on one side, and earnest abolitionists from New England on the other.  The violence peaked on Kansas prairies in the decade before the US Civil War officially began, fought with guns, newspapers, artillery, and sometimes even broadswords.  A Boston-based company seeded those earnest abolitionists into that prairie and eventually looked the other way as they transformed themselves from farmers to vigilantes and soldiers.


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Pamphlets, Statues, and the Selling of Joseph (episode 191)

In June 1700, a brief pamphlet titled The Selling of Joseph was published in Boston.  It’s considered the first abolitionist tract to be published in what’s now the United States.  Authored by Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall, the three page pamphlet uses biblical references to argue that enslaving another person could never be considered moral.  Listen to find out what motivated Sewall to write the tract, how his peers in Boston reacted to it, and what its effect was on the wider world.  In light of recent events, we’ll also consider the current debate around statues and their removal.  


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Like a Trump of Coming Judgement (episode 190)

This week, we’re revisiting a classic episode about the radical Black abolitionist David Walker.  Walker was a transplant to Boston, moving here after possibly being involved in Denmark Vesey’s planned 1822 slave insurrection in South Carolina.  At a time when very few whites spoke of ending slavery, Frederick Douglass said Walker’s book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement.”  He demanded an immediate end to slavery, and he endorsed violence against white slave owners to bring about abolition.  After the book helped inspire Nat Turner’s 1830 uprising in Virginia, southern slave states banned his book and offered a reward for anyone who would kill or kidnap him.  With a price on his head, many people believed that David Walker’s mysterious death in a Beacon Hill doorway just a year after his landmark book was published was an assassination.  


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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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Separate but Equal in Boston (episode 162)

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month.  When five year old Sarah Roberts was turned away from the schoolhouse door in Boston simply because of the color of her skin, her father sued the city in an attempt to force the public schools to desegregate, in compliance with a state law that had been intended to do just that years before.  Unfortunately, the suit was unsuccessful. Not only did the Boston schools remain segregated, but the court’s decision provided the legal framework of “separate but equal,” which would be used to justify segregated schools across the country for a century to come.


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Over the River and Through the Wood (episode 160)

We know the song “Over the River and Through the Wood” as a Christmas carol, but it was originally titled “The New England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day.” Despite the song’s quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer, the woman who wrote it was anything but traditional. Medford native Lydia Maria Child had been a pioneering children’s author, but her increasingly radical positions on abolitionism, women’s rights, and freethinking jeopardized her earning power and helped galvanize a movement. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!


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