"No Longer Pliant Tools: Urban Politics and Conflicts over African American Partisanship in 1880s Boston, Massachusetts," Journal of Urban History, Vol 44, Issue 2, (March 2018): 169-186
During the 1880s, black Bostonians engaged deeply in urban electoral politics, and debates over partisanship became discussions over the place of African Americans in the United States body politic. They agreed that having a political party respond to one’s needs and interests was part of being a full and equal citizen, but divided over how best to achieve this vision. Loyal black Republicans hoped to motivate the party from within. So-called African American independents, however, broke away from Republicans and expected both major parties to earn their votes. They rejected the idea that they owed any party loyalty or unanimity based on past deeds. Focusing on the Massachusetts gubernatorial reelection campaign of Democrat Benjamin Butler in 1883, this article shows how, in their struggle for equality, black voters of either position saw urban electoral politics as an invaluable tool to achieve full citizenship protections and exercise black political power. Read More...
"“We Do Not Care Particularly about the Skating Rinks”: African American Challenges to Racial Discrimination in Places of Public Amusement in Nineteenth-Century Boston, Massachusetts." The Journal of the Civil War Era 5, no. 2 (2015): 254-288.
On a Saturday in January 1885, Richard Brown, a night inspector of customs and prominent member of Boston’s black community, and two of his grandchildren, Louisa and Richard Lewis, approached the ticket booth at the Boston Roller Skating Rink, owned by Frank Winslow. George Hawes, the rink’s ticket agent, immediately informed Brown that the establishment was private and that African Americans were not welcome. Brown objected, arguing that the rink publicly advertised, called for the patronage of the public, and was not, therefore, a private facility. Hawes was moved by neither Brown’s appeal nor his crying grandchildren, and upon his orders, two or three men grabbed Brown by the collar as the three were “violently thrust out of the building.” Brown was angered not only by the general insult but because the incident took place in front of his grandchildren. They, Brown explained in a petition to Boston’s city council for the revocation of the rink’s license, had been born after the Civil War, and “since the abolition of slavery had never till then known the extent of the prejudice which once existed against their race and color and which lingers among ill informed persons.” Several days later, in a separate incident, employees excluded attorney Edward Everett Brown and furniture salesroom manager George Freeman from the Highland Skating Rink in Roxbury. When questioned about his motives, the rink manager David McKay responded, “You are colored, and your friend is colored; I allow no colored persons to skate on my floor.” They could, McKay explained, “buy tickets admitting them simply as spectators . . . but they cannot skate here. . . . I would not break the rule even for Fred Douglass"....Read More...