On September 9, 1919, more than 1,100 City of Boston police officers walked off the job to fight for union recognition and improved working conditions. In the days that followed, they lost their employment and public sympathy, and Boston’s streets erupted in lawlessness and riots. The replacement police workers hired in the wake of the strike received the concessions that the strikers were denied, while the fired police officers were left without jobs and unable to find employment in Boston. The strike was one of the most dramatic incidents in Boston’s history, and had long-lasting local and national political impact, including helping to catapult Calvin Coolidge into the U.S. Presidency.
University Archives & Special Collections in the Joseph P. Healey Library at UMass Boston launched the 1919 Boston Police Strike Project to document and preserve the stories of the more than 1,100 police officers who were involved in this highly influential labor strike. By September 9th, 2019–the centennial of the strike–the team will have compiled an online biographical database documenting each of the officers who went out on strike, for the benefit of researchers, historians, students and others, including family members of the strikers.
In Spring 2019, graduate students in HIST 625 “Interpreting History in Public: Approaches to Public History Practice” partnered with UASC to document the participants in the 1919 strike, its impact on the city, and and explore the ways that the Boston Police Strike of 1919 has been remembered by descendants, and the public. Our historical research and interpretation will require us to consider questions such as: How we can understand this local event in the context of broader local and national histories? What are the histories of individual strikers? How did their participation shape their personal and family histories? How did strikers function within the local and police communities? How have the strikers’ descendants remembered the strike? How did organized labor respond to and understand the strike, and how did they publicly acknowledge it? What is the meaning of this event today? To whom does the history of this strike matter?
Public History students contributed to the Boston Police Strike website in multiple formats. They wrote brief biographies of strikers based on material in the striker database and other primary sources; created a digital map of the 1919 strike, using images and text that incorporates various perspectives on key places prior to, during, and just after the strike; collaborated with strike descendants to document family stories and memories of the strike and impact on their family/community; and explored primary sources to understand public commemorations and interpretations of the strike by labor and non-labor perspectives. All of these endeavors found its way onto the Boston Police Strike website and is available for public use.
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