Student research – Public History at UMass Boston

Tag: Student research

Screenshot of the 1919 Boston Police Strike Project

“Abandoned His Duty”: Uncovering the 1919 Boston Policemen Strike

By Nina Rodwin

In the fall semester, my HIST 600 class had the opportunity to participate in a collaborative project between UMass Boston and the Boston Police Department Archives. We were tasked with documenting the lives of the officers involved in the police strike of 1919. Policemen had demanded a higher yearly salary, adopting the slogan “$200 or nothing” (Puleo, 143). When their demands were ignored, 1,400 police officers walked out. From September 9^th to the 11^th, Bostonians rioted and reacted violently (often towards the striking officers). President Wilson found the found the strike so disturbing that he described it as a “crime against civilization” (Puleo, 155-156). The police head clearly felt the same, firing all striking officers with no chance of re-employment. The men’s duty cards, which detailed each officer’s employment history, were stamped with a large “abandoned his duty, September 9^th 1919.” These duty cards lay in the BPD archives for years, largely forgotten. It was only by chance that a former BPD archivist discovered these cards and was immediately filled with questions: who were these men and what happened to them after the strike?

Image of Hugh P. McGuire’s Duty Card

The scale of the project required collaboration, not only between UMass Boston and the BPD archivists, but also volunteers, the police officers’ descendants, and finally, my own class. While we entered the project in order to learn genealogical research skills, it was gratifying to see that our small contribution helped in a large-scale project. Each student was instructed to pick an officer and fill in vital information into a worksheet. We used public records to uncover these men’s lives, searching through the census, birth and death records, military records and newspapers. To me, the most engaging records were the census records, as they not only reflected a specific officer’s life, but also larger changing trends in America.

Image of Hugh P. McGuire from the 1901 “The Officers and The Men The Stations Without and Within of The Boston Police.” This book’s yearbook format was a great source for photographs of the striking BPD officers.

I choose Hugh P. McGuire, who seemed to have a relatively good life before the strike: he lived in his rented house with his wife and four children and had been on the police force since 1896. However, his whole family was drastically affected by the strike. Just one year later, McGuire was working as a watchman for a lumberyard. His eldest son and daughter, then in their twenties, continued to live in his house. These two children may have stayed home to contribute to family finances, as both were employed. By the 1930 census, it is clear that he was experiencing still more trouble: he was now unemployed, and while his sons seem to have left home, his two daughters remained as the sole breadwinners in his household.

By 1940, Hugh McGuire was 74 years old. According to census records, he was “unable to work.” His eldest daughter, Anna, now 40, continued to care for her parents as a secretary for the Veterans Bureau. As the sole breadwinner, she received a yearly salary of $1,980, which in today’s money ($34,500) would relegate the McGuire family to the lower class. However, this census information has its drawbacks: even though it offers us Anna’s yearly income, we don’t know, if McGuire’s sons contributed to the household, if McGuire received Social Security benefits, or if the McGuire family saved money before Hugh lost his job. In other words, the whole family may have been struggling to make ends meet.

Image from the United States Census, 1940.

The census records also leave out vital information about McGuire’s wife. Was she unemployed because she was fulfilling the stereotypical duties of white women at the time, or did her lack of education (she only completed the further grade) shut her out of the scant opportunities women could obtain? As much as the census can aid researchers, it will never be able to answer these compelling questions, and may often leave researchers with more questions!

Image from the United States Census, 1930. In the “Home Data” section, it asks the family to report if they own a radio set.

While census records offer the bare facts of an individual’s life, they are quite useful to demonstrate large-scale changes in health, education, immigration and even leisure through their questionnaires. For example, in both the 1900 and 1910 census, participants are asked to list the number of children born, as well as the number of children living. This distinction reflected the high child mortality rate during the time; Hugh’s wife was quite lucky that all four of her children survived. However, by the 1920s, efforts to combat childhood diseases increased, and the census no longer included this category. The most amusing category was in 1930s census, which included a category simply titled “radio set” reflecting the growing number of families with radios, including the McGuire family. This category disappeared by the next census in 1940, reflecting both that radio sets were no longer novelties and the assumption that most households owned a radio.

This research was so engaging that I chose to volunteer my time to help the project further. While completing the worksheets of three more policemen, I learned a valuable lesson about genealogical research: researchers should not always trust their internet searches. When attempting to find the birth records for a man named Owen Katon, I was unable to discover his information. It was only with the aid of UMass Boston archivist Joanne Riley that I noticed there had been a transcribing error between the physical documents and the online search results. When I searched for Owen Katon, I had only found one record for “William Katon” and promptly assumed it couldn’t be the correct person. However, Riley taught me an important lesson: never assume that the online search results are always correct. When I actually looked at the scanned records for “William Katon,” I discovered that the records were really for Owen Katon after all! This is not to say that websites are untrustworthy; rather, researchers must be aware of these human errors, and conduct their research accordingly.

The BPD Strike Project still continues, with the goal of completion by the 100^th anniversary on September 9^th, 2019. If you are looking to improve your genealogical skills, for your own personal or scholarly projects, I strongly I strongly recommend getting involved.

Reference

Puleo, Stephen. Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Boston, Mass: Beacon Press, 2004.

Cover of the METCO information pamphlet.

Pamphlet for parents about the METCO program.

FROM THE CITY TO THE SUBURBS: VOLUNTARY SCHOOL DESEGREGATION THROUGH BOSTON’S METCO PROGRAM

February 26, 2017 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By: Corinne Zaczek Bermon

In 1974, a young boy named Kevin Tyler stepped off his bus on the first day of school.((Name changed as request of former METCO student.)) As the Kevin looked out at the area surrounding his new school, he could only think that everything was foreign and weird. Although he was only ten miles from home, the Roxbury native thought that suburbia was another world. Gone were the noises from the street and common spaces and in their place were fences, private backyards, and white faces. Although it smelled cleaner, it wasn’t exactly pleasant to Kevin as the fresher air “felt weird to [his] nose.” The white students around him sounded strange and bland when they spoke, not in the expressive style he were used to in Roxbury. But even on his first day of school, Kevin could see that life in the suburbs was easier, charmed even.((Susan Eaton, The Other Boston Busing Story: What’s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 218-219.))

Pamphlet for parents about the METCO program. Image courtesy Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections.

Many METCO students experienced a disconnect after they disembarked the buses that brought them to their suburban schools. Perhaps more profoundly than anyone, these young students saw the consequences of the deep racial and class divide that characterized Boston. The suburbs may be close geographically to the metropolitan area, but as Robert observed, they were worlds apart.

So how did students of color end up at schools in the suburbs? As we have passed the fortieth anniversary of busing for school desegregation, it is important to note, that voluntary busing existed before Morgan v. Hennigan mandated it, and still exists today as the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity or, as it is commonly know, METCO.

Even after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, de facto segregation remained prevalent in both the northern and southern US schools. In 1967 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a pamphlet titled “Schools Can Be Desegregated,” which made several statements regarding segregated schools in the US:

Racial isolation in the public schools is intense and is growing worse.

Negro children suffer serious harm when they are educated in racially segregated schools, whatever the origin of that segregation. They do not achieve as well as other children; their aspirations are more restricted than those of other children; and they do not have as much confidence that they can influence their own futures.

White children in all-white schools are also harmed and frequently are ill prepared to live in a world of people from diverse social, economic, and cultural background.((U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, “Schools Can be Desegregated” (Washington, D.C.: Clearinghouse Publication No. 8, June 1967) 1.))

A Bird's Eye View from Within-As We See It by the staff and board of Operation Exodus

“A Bird’s Eye View from Within – As We See It,” report on Operation Exodus, 1965. Image courtesy Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections. Full report online.

Faced with the unresponsive and all-white Boston School Committee’s stance towards de facto segregation in Boston schools, concerned parents and activists founded “Operation Exodus” through Roxbury’s Freedom House in 1965 as a voluntary way to desegregate Boston Public Schools. In its first year, 400 African American students from Roxbury and Dorchester were bused to the predominantly white, but under enrolled, Faneuil School in Back Bay. In 1966, Operation Exodus was renamed the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO). Immediately, Black students faced the problem of how to address race while part of an expressly integration-based program. As Susan Eaton, Ed.D., expert in racial and economic inequality in public education, discovered, “neither [black nor white students] talked to the other about race – the very thing that appeared to be separating them. As a result, race frequently felt to the black students like a family secret. To keep life going smoothly, everyone compliantly locked the race subject away. It was too potent to open, to delicate to touch.”((Eaton, 81.)) The attitude towards race as a subject to be avoided in some ways reflected the outcry against METCO in the city.

The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. program created controversy in nearly every town to which it bused black urban students.

Photograph of black and white students sitting together in a classroom in Boston, circa 1973. Image courtesy of Boston City Archives.

While some suburbanites welcomed the program as a way to expose their children to a more diverse group of classmates while also assisting underprivileged urban students, others did not focus on the ideological mission of METCO. Instead, they considered the financial costs of the program, the potential negative impact on schools, and the needs of their own children to be more important than minimally integrating their school systems. Others accused METCO of reverse racism for primarily busing African American students rather than poor white students. During the 1970s busing crisis within Boston, the program exposed divisions and resentments between suburbs and the city and within the suburbs themselves. Many began to question the value of integration as well as its effectiveness. With the potential costs to each town and to each taxpayer, residents of both the city and suburbs wondered, was the ideological goal of integration a worthwhile endeavor?

The online exhibit, “Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO): Solving Racial Imbalance in Boston Public Schools,” created by graduate students Kristin Harris (MA American Studies, 2015) and Corinne Zaczek Bermon (MA American Studies, 2015; MA History Archives Track, 2017) explores the founding of the organization and the effects it had as a voluntary busing program rather than the controversial “forced busing.”

Using the METCO collection at Northeastern University, Harris and Bermon combed through nearly 144 boxes to find the story of METCO. They hand selected documents that highlighted the difficulties METCO had in funding despite support from the Board of Education and how parents stayed involved in the program through parent councils to keep their children safe and in the program.

This exhibit tells the story of the other side of the busing crisis in 1974-1975. Despite the ongoing violence and intimidation happening in city schools such as South Boston High School and Charlestown High School, METCO students had been quietly and determinedly attended suburban schools through their own busing program. Their stories counteract the narrative that all student busing for desegregation was fraught with protests and violence. The METCO program today still serves as a model for the country as to how to racially balance schools.

Visit the full exhibit to read more about METCO’s beginning and see how parent councils were involved closely with the host schools.

An aerial photograph of Columbia Point along Boston Harbor in Dorchester, MA.

A Reflection of Columbia Point’s Participatory Exhibit

November 8, 2015 / Heidi Gengenbach / 1 Comment

By: Paige E. Kinder

Last spring, I had the privilege of taking a practicum class that challenged me and strengthened me as a public historian. “Making a History of Columbia Point: A Participatory Exhibition” was the graduate class I always hoped grad school would provide for me. As a class, we were responsible for creating a participatory pop-up exhibit, working with the local community around University of Massachusetts Boston—a community who lived, worked, and loved Columbia Point. I’ll admit, it was intimidating at the start, but the class left a lasting impression on me.

The syllabus portrayed a project that seemed simple enough; however, once we were completely submerged in research, class meetings, and archival visits, I felt that I had bitten off more than I could chew. There were five students working on the project with me and we all came to the project with different backgrounds, interests, work ethics, and experience. Nevertheless, we all dove in together. We spent the beginning of the semester researching a wide range of aspects about Columbia Point’s history, like its geography, housing complexes, school systems, and community activists, just to name a few. We examined oral interviews of residents, read papers from the Boston Housing Authority, collected newspaper clippings, and finally managed to develop a solid foundation from which we created the exhibit.

Creating an exhibition always seemed easy enough. I felt after working in museums that it mostly followed the same pattern; do research, go through the collection and pull necessary artifacts, write labels, install, and enjoy. I will never again see exhibit creation in the same way again. After doing our initial research, we were tasked with creating a timeline of important moments in Columbia Point’s history, generating a collection, and locating sites on an interactive map. Judith Marshall, another student in class, and I were chosen as the collections team, which I was really excited about until I realized we had no pre-established collection. How were we supposed to curate artifacts when they did not exist? Judith and I worked tirelessly to locate articles, photographs, and objects that would lend themselves to conversations of Columbia Point’s history. We hoped that the people who came to our event would want to tell us their impression of these items, but also share with us stories of their own. My mind slowly shifted from seeing objects as the center of exhibits to seeing the social stories and memories that stemmed from objects as the focal points. I had never thought about exhibits in that way before, and my perception of what public historians do changed once again.

Our pop-up exhibit took place on May 9, 2015. We had spent weeks creating a timeline, a map, and a collection. We also met and choose participatory elements we wanted to implement alongside our labels to create a way for our visitors to contribute to our findings. The timeline was meant to be altered, so we had post-it notes around the edges and invited visitors to add events—both historical and personal—to our pre-planned events. The collection was definitely not complete. Judith and I found 14 items that we thought represented Columbia Point’s history well, but we knew people could bring us objects we would have never found on our own. We invited our visitors to bring photographs, documents, and items that they wanted to share. Our map worked in the same way. As a class we choose 6 places that we felt were important to the history, but hoped the community would contribute locations as well.

Judith Marshall (right) and I (left) next to our label, inviting visitors to contribute to the exhibit’s collection.

The participatory element of our exhibit was extraordinary, not only for us but for our visitors as well. Museums and exhibits never seem like places that allow you to manipulate labels, and collections, and displays, but for one day the visitors were allowed too, and they took full advantage. It was a slow start, since no one wanted to be the first to contribute, but by the end of our day, different colored post-it notes covered our timeline, over 100 items had been added to our collection, and so many more locations found their way onto the map. The stress I felt early in the semester was a distant memory. I was in my zone. Hearing people talk about the events we researched, meeting people we read about in books, and sharing our own insights with people who lived through these events were moments I will never have again. The class may have been hard, but the feeling of knowing you are on the right path professionally was a well-deserved award at the end of the semester.

After the class ended, I had a hard time thinking of what our work would mean to other people. Would people know this event happened? Would people want to add more things to our collection? Would people see the work we had already done? I approached our instructor a little after the semester ended to see if there was anything more I could do. Thankfully people in the historical field are always looking to help graduate students, and I lucked into working with the University Archives and Special Collections at UMASS Boston to process our collection. Those 100 photographs we collected and all the information we knew about them now had a chance to be available online. I worked all summer long to scan in photos and log information into the school’s database. I was able to see our project from a different level, and it inspired me to take more archival classes and add an archival certificate to my degree.

A class that seemed intimidating, felt impossible, and challenged me became so much more. I know now I want to be a public historian. I want the stresses and challenges of the research, and the delight and excitement in uncovering new artifacts. I want the conversations with the public, and the chance to hear from the community. I also want to explore all aspects of public history, and take more classes out of my comfort zone. I can only hope everyone feels this way when they take their 625 Practicum.

Rundlet May House, a federal-style house in Portsmouth New Hampshire, built in 1807.

Exploring Portsmouth through Craftsmen’s Eyes

November 8, 2015 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

By Judith Marshall

I began my master’s degree at UMass Boston with a vague understanding of public history. I knew that it gave me the opportunity to pursue my passion for history outside of the academic world. However, I did not have any real experience doing public history and I was a little uncertain and nervous about my choice. I was quickly immersed into this world, gaining experience not only in public history but also in archives. At UMass I have had the opportunity to attend conferences, volunteer with public history projects, and collaborate with community organizations in course practicums. The most rewarding, however, has been my internship with Historic New England.

This internship has been an invaluable part of my public history education, giving me the ability to gain hands-on experience in the field. In spring 2015, I started my internship at Historic New England, an organization that aims to preserve and interpret New England architecture and material culture. I was eager to start this internship for a couple of reasons. First of all, I value their capacity to use historic houses as a means of interpreting everyday life in the past. Second of all, I appreciate their dedication to making New England’s culture engaging and accessible to the public—both through their historic houses and their wonderful public programs.

My internship project required that I research the men who were involved in building one of Historic New England properties—the Rundlet May House, a 19^th century history home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—and then write an interpretation proposal based on that research.

Rundlet May House, a federal-style house in Portsmouth New Hampshire, built in 1807.

This project immediately interested me. Traditionally, historic homes have focused on the wealthy families who lived in them. However, recent public history practices have started to change how historic homes interpret regional histories. Some historic institutions have now begun to include the histories of marginalized populations, using the homes to discuss the lived experiences of enslaved people and servants. Researching and interpreting the lives of the men who built the Rundlet May House would be a continuation of this trend to include everyday people in the interpretation of historic homes. Serendipitously, James Rundlet, the merchant that built the house, left a detailed work schedule and account book. These documents offered me an accurate picture of the men involved, the supplies they used, the time it took them, and the wages they received. In other words, I had a fascinating window into the lives of the craftsmen.

After transcribing the schedule and account book, I researched the craftsmen, a challenging task. I knew relatively little about the craftsmen, besides their names and the fact that they were in Portsmouth between 1807 and 1808. This problem was compounded with the fact that so many men in New England had the same name, making the research particularly tricky. For instance, when looking for information about James Folsom, a carpenter who worked on the Rundlet May House in 1807, I found census records that included James Folsom I, II, III, IV, V, and VI. These records were even more difficult to discern when you include the fact that pre-1840 census records only documented the names of the head of the households. All other persons in the household, from a certain age range, were only numerically counted. It became difficult to determine which one of these James Folsoms was the joiner who worked on James Rundlet’s house.

James Folsom from Exeter New Hampshire (note: NOT the James Folsom who worked on the Rundlet May House) posted this message in the newspaper in 1812. Even he was annoyed with having the same name as so many others! “Owing to the frequent mistakes made by there being a number of persons of the name JAMES FOLSOM in this town, the subscriber, son of Benjamin Folsom, late of Newmarket, respectfully requests his friends and others having occasion to direct letters, etc. to him, to call and consider him by his real name. James B. Folsom.” Source: Constitutionalist (Exeter, NH), August 4, 1812. Volume: II, Issue: 7, Page: 1.

The interpretive proposal, at first, felt like uncharted territory. I had some experience with public interpretation, but it was still relatively new to me. This part of my internship became the most rewarding and exciting aspect. Initially, I thought I would plan a house tour that examined each room from a different craftsman’s eyes. In each room I would give a biography about a craftsman and link his work to Rundlet’s house. However I thought that this would be a disjointed tour, with nothing linking the rooms together. I scratched the idea and I started to think about different avenues of interpretation.

During my research, I uncovered a wealth of information about the craftsmen themselves. I discovered that many of them had a robust political life, including some of who were elected municipal officers. I also learned that some were involved with societies such as the New Hampshire Mechanics Association. I wanted to find a way to include all these facets of their lives into my interpretation so I developed a proposal for a walking tour. I thought that a walking tour would be a great way to reveal the craftsmen’s lives to the public. I could discuss not just their work at the Rundlet May House, but also their political activities, the societies they belonged to, and the other houses they helped construct.

The walking tour gave me the opportunity to interpret history spatially instead of just thematically. While it is my instinct to organize historic evidence in thematic terms, so that each story flows smoothly to the next, this kind of narrative form is not logistically possible within the format of a walking tour. The organization of walking tours depends on the geographical location of a site; tour participants would not be happy to walk from one side of Portsmouth to the other just so I that could connect two complementary sites thematically. Looking at interpretation in terms of space meant that I had to reorganize my frame of thinking.

Before I knew it, the semester was over. Yet there was so much more I wanted to do with the tour. After all, I had only created a brief proposal. After discussing it with staff at Historic New England and my mentors at UMass Boston, I have decided to use my proposal as the foundation for my capstone project. This semester I am building on the work I did for my internship, conducting more research on the craftsmen and creating a full tour script. Most excitingly, I will have the opportunity to give a trial run of the tour. I am thrilled to see this project through to the end.

Call in your best players Boston, the bleachers are full.

August 20, 2015 / Heidi Gengenbach / 0 Comments

“Call in Your Best Players Boston, the Bleachers Are Full: An International and Domestic Response to Boston Busing directed at Mayor Kevin White”

By: Caitlin Pinkham, graduate student in History

Since its foundation, Boston recognized itself as a “city upon a hill.” A city that fought against the crown, the first to have an underground subway system and provide a home to activists and political progressives abound. In various moments of history, Boston became the beacon providing insight into new political understandings and transformations. As the buses began to roll to combat segregation, Boston once again found itself in the national spotlight.

Sitting on the bleachers, countries and states watched Boston deploy players and officials to uphold a decision for the desegregation of schools made by Judge in 1974. As controversy and violence quickly arose in city neighborhoods, countries and states chimed in with their opinions on exactly what Boston should do to combat discrimination. Yelling from the bleachers, theses spectators brought their own perspectives and opinions into the city.

Through letters sent personally to Boston’s Mayor Kevin White and newspapers with editorials from different states and countries. I hope this archive will begin to shed light on how the situation in Boston grew from a citywide dilemma to an international issue. The mayor received letters from countries as far away as Australia (see below for aerogramme from R.M. Lewis in Sydney, Australia) and as close to the border as Mexico. Various states provided their perspectives to Boston as well. Everyone had an opinion about the correct maneuver that would outsmart discrimination. These letters will surely demonstrate various opinions and once again solidify Boston’s position as a “city upon a hill.”

Front page of letter from R.M. Lewis (Sydney Australia) to Kevin White. Courtesy of Boston City Archives, Boston MA.

verso of letter from R.M. Lewis (Sydney Australia) to Kevin White. Courtesy of Boston City Archives, Boston MA.

Public History at UMass Boston