Boston Riots: Three Centuries of Social Violence

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Description

From the food uprisings within the early 1700s to the notorious anti-busing riots within the mid-1970s, incidents of communal social violence have played a significant role in Boston’s history.

Jack Tager explores the more than 100 riots that occurred within the city over a span of nearly three centuries. Drawing on exhaustive research in newspaper archives, Jack Tager revisits both well- and lesser-known episodes, including the grain, impressment, brothel, and Pope Day riots of the eighteenth century; the anti-Catholic, abolition, and draft riots of the nineteenth century; and the Kosher meat, police strike, ghetto, and busing riots of the twentieth century.

Tager identifies the protagonists, highlights their motives and demands, and seeks to resolve whether they realized their goals. He also examines how sufferers suffered by the hands in their fellow citizens, shows how law enforcement responded to the riots, and considers the complex social interactions and tensions that contributed to the uprisings. He finds that most incidents of violent civil disorder were initiated by the powerless lower classes who believed rioting was once the one avenue for giving voice to their grievances over political, cultural, religious, or economic oppression.

This vivid portrait of an ever-changing community over the years provides a revealing glimpse into peoples’ anger, aspirations, and frustrations. It sheds new light on why groups are provoked to take unlawful action in accordance with unjust conditions, and it opens a fresh vista at the social history of Boston.

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