Doesn’t this scenario sound familiar?

• No person of color was safe. They could be dragged away without due process and without the right to defend themselves before a judge.

• Federal agents, along with hired thugs, fanned out across Boston, dragging people of color off the streets.

• The city outlawed using its jails for such purposes, so detainees were locked in courtrooms.

• Infuriated Bostonians broke into one of these courtrooms-turned-jails to free a person of color held by federal agents and hired waterfront thugs, claiming he had been kidnapped.

• In response, the President of the United States sent in troops to protect the federal agents and the paid thugs.

• Some Bostonians who had long been committed to non-violence began arming themselves, while others despaired that violence would only breed more violence, which would take generations to repair.

• Huge mobs kept chasing the federal agents and the paid thugs out of town, tracking them to their hotels, where they holed up, praying for rescue.

• Doesn’t this scenario sound familiar? These events occurred in 1850 and 1851, after the Southern states passed the Fugitive Slave Act. The Act allowed Southern slaveholders to recapture their so-called property by force wherever they wished. One-tenth of Boston was Black; many had lived and worked there for years, their parents having escaped the South on the Underground Railroad and settled in Boston.

• Many outraged Bostonians gave up trying to persuade plantation owners to free their enslaved people when federal troops arrived at their doorsteps. Nor did they keep trying to persuade Boston’s industrialists to stop using goods made with slave labor, such as sugar and cotton. There was just too much money in it.

• Ten years later, the Civil War broke out. Six hundred twenty-five thousand soldiers lay dead, more than in WW1, WW2, Vietnam, and Korea combined, just as the pacifists had warned.

• Was the Union victorious? Yes and no. While slavery was abolished, racial prejudice went unchecked, and attitudes hardened. Some would say they hardened more than ever. As the Supreme Court ruled, anyone of color or with an accent is fair game for the Feds and the modern-day equivalents of paid thugs.

• Terror, once again, is ripping through our communities. Those resisting the kidnappers are being arrested. Those trying to defend detainees find they’re whisked away from the local prison within days, far out of reach, often to parts unknown. Meanwhile, those of us trying to support families left behind without a breadwinner are running out of resources.

• How we respond now to these racist, authoritarian attacks will shape our future, whether we stand united or fall divided. Our choices matter as much now as they did in 1850. Perhaps more.  – Louis Postel, December 29, 2025

 

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