The Boston Massacre (five deaths by British soldiers policing Boston, guarding the King’s money) triggered the American Revolution. Patriots destroyed property before dumping the tea — targeting those who had helped the British.

We now experience similar events that led to the Declaration of Independence, but on a larger scale. More blood has spilled and more taxes taken (to spill more blood). Act upon misleading act, diminishing the people’s power and security, all in the name of false security.

Faneuil Hall was paid for by a man whose riches came from triangular slavery. The patriots were angry that the people they held as slaves saw free Black men in the British Army, moving as they pleased.

After the Supreme Court ruled in 1781 and 1783 that one man could not hold another as slave, per the Massachusetts Bay Colony Constitution (Maine was part of Massachusetts until the racist Missouri Compromise in 1820) the law was never amended to follow suit with that very hushed ruling; and four years later, Massachusetts opened its first cotton textile mill. Directly complicit in chattel slavery, the “free” states were a mechanism to crank industrialization with forced and coerced Black labor.

Black folk (even in the north) gained freedom if they risked running away, were privy to know about Supreme Court/political happenings and had a white ally to enter and navigate the court, or if they joined the militia to terrorize natives.

Heather Berube, Lewiston

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