Topic: Politics & Law
Politics, politicians, political clubs, laws, lawyers, courts, jurisprudence, criminals, crime, law enforcement, jails
The West End branch of the Land League made political and financial contributions to the original Land League in Ireland, an organization of tenant farmers and Irish nationalists that resisted high rents and evictions in the 1880s.
Far from their country of origin, Ukrainian immigrants and their descendants in the West End maintained connections and advocated for justice in their mother country.
Adelaide Cromwell, the late sociologist who taught at Boston University and founded BU’s African American Studies program in 1969, documented and visualized the West End’s historic Black community in the 1800s.
The Early Settlers of the West End (1630 – 1645): Robert Fairbanks, Public House Keeper
At the age of five, Sarah Roberts was at the center of a lawsuit against racially segregated public schools in Boston in 1847. Roberts, a Black girl, was denied the equal right to attend the public school of her choice, forced instead to walk past five public schools to the Black-only Abiel Smith School in the old West End.
In the late 1950s, the Committee to Save the West End brought residents and political leaders together to vigorously oppose the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s plan to raze 50 acres of the neighborhood.
Thomas Clarke The Early Settlers of the West End (1630 – 1645): Thomas Clarke, Speaker of the House of Massachusetts Bay Colony Thomas Clarke owned vast amounts of land and businesses across Boston. He was very much involved in the local government throughout his life and commanded the Suffolk Regiment in 1651. Later, he would go…
The West End played a key role in defining the U.S. jurisprudence surrounding the execution and maintenance of contracts set out in the U.S. Constitution in two major cases: Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge & Fletcher v. Peck.
