Tag: Socialism

Boy Wonder Arrested as Ringleader when Reds Riot in Roxbury (episode 221)

On May Day in 1919, Roxbury socialists marched in support of a textile workers’ strike in Lawrence.  The afternoon turned violent, with police firing shots to disperse the crowd.  In the aftermath, two officers were killed and a mob formed that hunted down and viciously beat many of the marchers.  As the smoke cleared, it became evident that one of the leaders of the march was a celebrity: William James Sidis, the boy wonder.


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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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