RACISM, RIOTS, & MURDER
Immigrants have long faced a hostile reception in Massachusetts
Burned convent in charlestown. The execution of two italian anarchists. harassment of businesses in chinatown. Antisemitic beatings in Dorchester and roxbury. vandalism targeting cambodian refugees in Fields corner.
Currently buffeted by waves of immigrants, and the scattered patches of concern and resistance that have followed, Massachusetts has a painful history of newcomers being met with violent resistance that lives alongside the region’s legacy as a beacon of liberty and a sanctuary for the oppressed.
Xenophobia. racism. riots. Murder. in Boston’s immigration story, it’s all there. Also courage, resilience, privation, and pluck — and the gradual acceptance of some newcomers and their rise to social and political influence.
It is, in short, not a new story but one we should know.
“Even the puritans were very distrustful of outsiders,” said William c. Leonard, a professor of Boston history at Emmanuel college.
The ongoing migrant crisis has resulted in families sleeping on the floor of Logan Airport as state and local authorities scramble to find accommodations in an already overtaxed shelter system. it has also provoked pushback in some quarters.
Massachusetts-based resettlement agencies logged more than 11,000 migrants from October 2022 through september 2023,
the federal fiscal year, but state officials don’t know for sure how many migrants are actually arriving.
it’s unclear what the longterm impact of this influx will be. but what is undeniable, according to Jonathan sarna, a history professor at brandeis University, is that immigration changes the social, cultural, and demographic fabric of communities.
“When i hear broad criticisms of today’s immigrants, one has déja vu,” said sarna during a recent phone interview.
Marilynn s. Johnson, a boston college research professor made a similar observation., “boston was a real center of immigration and continues to be,” she said, “and that often brings about negative responses.”
“and it’s also been a place that’s had economic ups and downs; when that collides with immigration, it can produce a lot of resentments,” said Johnson, co-director of Global boston, a digital project at bc that chronicles the history of immigration in the region.
today, Johnson said, the region’s housing crisis may be contributing to unease. Where will all the new arrivals live? and who will foot the bill? Governor Maura healey’s administration has projected it will cost $915 million to run the state’s emergency shelter system at current levels during the fiscal year that begins July 1.
“i don’t want to say everyone who is opposed to migrants coming in is necessarily racist or nativist,” Johnson said, “because there are real problems here in terms of the housing situation.”
“often people feel like their communities are overrun, and there’s no support forthcoming from the federal government because of all the gridlock in Washington,” she said. “so it is a source of frustration, but it’s one that we’ve seen before in the past.”
indeed, one of the earliest and most-cited instances of violent xenophobia locally is the burning down of a catholic convent in a section of then-charlestown, now somerville, by an angry protestant mob in 1834, in the middle of a decade when the number of irish catholics in the city doubled. that brought about religious and ethnic tensions and stoked stories of papist plots on street corners and in taverns.
the burning of the Ursuline convent was a precursor to fierce anti-catholicism in the years to come, as the irish continued to pour into boston. three years later, a huge irish funeral procession and a group of Yankee firefighters engaged in a brawl so large and violent that it took 800 armed troops to restore order in what would become known as the broad street riot. in the 1840s, in the midst of the Great Famine in ireland, a stream of new arrivals were met with a fierce local backlash. (J. anthony lukas’s pulitzer prize-winning nonfiction book “common Ground” has 130,000 irish disembarking at the port of boston between 1846 and 1856.)
“our country is literally being overrun with the miserable, vicious, and unclean paupers of the old country,” the bunker hill aurora newspaper in charlestown proclaimed in 1847.
in the 1890s, as newcomers from italy and southeastern europe arrived at a time of sweeping industrialization and urbanization, a trio of boston brahmin intellectuals founded the immigration restriction league, which laid the intellectual groundwork for many contemporary hard-line anti-immigration beliefs.
the league’s great ally in Washington, henry cabot lodge, a well-known senator from Massachusetts and a boston brahmin, was known as a staunch anti-immigrant nationalist during his political career. in 1891, lodge wrote that immigration was increasing at that time, adding that “it is making its relative increase from races most alien to the body of the american people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those races.”
“in other words, it is apparent that, while our immigration is increasing, it is showing at the same time a marked tendency to deteriorate in character,” he wrote.
lodge also hailed the 1882 chinese exclusion act, which prohibited new immigration from china and blocked those already here from becoming naturalized citizens. the wisdom of the act, lodge wrote, “everybody now admits.”
in the decades after that act, police routinely raided businesses in boston’s chinatown, searching for people who may have entered the United states illegally. in one such raid, in 1903, police cordoned off the neighborhood as authorities burst into houses and businesses alike without warrants, according to bc researchers. of the 234 people arrested by police during that raid, 50 were deported.
the trial and execution of Nicola sacco and bartolomeo vanzetti, both italian immigrants and anarchists, in Massachusetts in the 1920s is still debated today.
Despite their pleas of innocence, they were convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair for fatally shooting two people during an armed robbery in braintree. political dissidents, unionists, italian immigrants, and other supporters — including poet edna st. vincent Millay — demonstrated across the United states and europe, arguing the two were targeted for their political beliefs and immigrant status. Decades later, Governor Michael Dukakis said their trial “was permeated by prejudice against foreigners and hostility toward unorthodox political views.”
additionally, the Ku Klux Klan established a foothold locally in the early decades of the 20th century. by 1925, the KKK had more than 130,000 members in Massachusetts, according to research from historian Mark paul richard, with the group taking aim at catholic and Jewish immigrants as well as black people.
indeed, antisemitism found a home in Greater boston, and it festered as the region’s Jewish population grew. During World War ii, bands of irish catholic youths assaulted Jewish people in Dorchester, roxbury, and Mattapan, according to one historian. the New York-based Yiddish daily newspaper the Day referred to the violence in Dorchester as “a series of small pogroms,” according to american Jewish history.
Driven from their homelands by war and genocide, vietnamese and cambodian refugees began arriving in larger numbers in the late 1970s and 1980s, carving out enclaves in Dorchester’s Fields corner and lowell. During the 1980s in Massachusetts, at least three asian refugees were killed by white assailants, according to media coverage of the time.
Unrest in latin america has dramatically altered Greater boston’s demographics in recent decades. in the 1980s, chelsea’s latino population surged as thousands of refugees fleeing violence and civil wars in el salvador, honduras, and Guatemala settled in.
lorna rivera, director for the Gastón institute for latino community Development & public policy at the University of Massachusetts boston, said latinos locally have faced discrimination in housing, employment, health care, and education.
“immigrants have always been the scapegoat,” she said. “always.”
in 1984, a race riot erupted in lawrence, when a blue-collar neighborhood erupted into multiple nights of violent turmoil. the spark was believed to be an argument between different groups about a broken car windshield that spiraled out of control. in a front-page dispatch, the New York times reported, “Dozens of young hispanic residents and some of their parents spoke bitterly of the prejudices they said they faced from whites. they spoke of trouble finding jobs and of harassment by the lawrence police.” lawrence’s population is currently more than 80 percent hispanic, according to the Us census.
in more recent years, xenophobia has surfaced again amid rising anti-immigrant rhetoric in national politics. in 2015, a pair of south boston brothers were charged with beating and urinating on a homeless Mexican immigrant. police alleged one of the brothers said, “Donald trump was right; all these illegals need to be deported.” the brothers pleaded guilty to several charges in the case.
in 2020, a white woman attacked a mother and daughter in east boston while they were speaking spanish, with the assailant allegedly saying, “this is america” and “Go back to your [expletive] country.”
Dina haynes, a professor at New england law and an immigration expert, applauds the state’s response to the latest surge of migrants. here, she said, officials have resisted antiimmigrant narratives that are grounded in national security concerns or “limited resource arguments.” Massachusetts has thus far avoided legislation such as an immigration proposal recently signed by the iowa governor that criminalized “illegal entry” into that state.
“Massachusetts has done a remarkable job in resisting pitting vulnerable groups against one another for scarce resources,” she said, “and i’m really proud of us for that.”
'IMMIGRANTS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE SCAPEGOAT. ALWAYS! LORNA RIVERA, director of the Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development & Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts