From kilts to bagpipes, local groups are promoting Scottish culture to stand out from Boston's long Irish heritage.

Boston, April 5, 1976. As the city simmered with racial tension over forced school busing, newsman Forman photographed a white protester outside City Hall assaulting the Black attorney Landsmark with the American flag. The photograph shocked Boston and made front pages across the U.S. and the world and won a Pulitzer Prize. Masur has done extensive research, including personal interviews with those involved, to reveal the unknown story of what really happened that day and afterward. This evocative "biography of a photograph" unpacks this arresting image to trace the lives of the men who intersected at that moment, to examine the power of photography and the meaning of the flag, and to reveal how a single picture helped change race relations in Boston and America.  The Soiling of Old Glory, like the photograph itself, offers a dramatic window into the turbulence of the 1970s and race relations in America.

Boston historians discuss the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party on The Culture Show. Then, Lisa Simmons joins host Jared Bowen to discuss recent Boston arts news

Three years before the American Revolutionary War began, Massachusetts colonists defied British taxation by dumping tea into the Boston Harbor. Now, the state marks the 250th anniversary of what came to be known as the historically pivotal Boston Tea Party.

It’s been 25 years since Hester, a Black trans woman, was found stabbed to death in her Boston apartment.

What was love like in New England during Colonial America? The surviving letters between John and Abigail Adams reveal the unconditional love they had for each other, but they also divulge long periods of separation, scandals and personal tragedies during their 54-year old romance. This true story for the ages that proves that love conquers all.

GBH is joined by Sara Martin, the editor-in-chief of The Adams Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society to discuss this swoon-worthy love story.

Since it was established in 1954, The Adams Papers has published letterpress volumes of the diaries, letters and other writings of the Adams family of Massachusetts. Recently, they published two letterpress series, Adams Family Correspondence and the Papers of John Adams, and two digital editions, the Adams Papers Digital Edition and the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary.

Sara participates in a number of outreach activities at the MHS, including educational workshops and public lectures on the Adams family and the craft of historical editing.

Her previous experience in public history includes partnerships with archaeologists and cultural heritage managers and work with local historical societies and community groups on public engagement projects and in-house exhibit development.

This event is hosted and moderated by Associate Producer of GBH News' Art & Culture, Haley Lerner.

This event is presented in partnership with Massachusetts Historical Society.

photo credit: portraits by Benjamin Blyth, ca. 1766


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Readings and performances of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol have played an integral part in winter holiday festivities since longer than most of us can remember. What fewer people know, however, is that the British literary superstar and his popular novella actually helped bring Christmas back to Boston.

Accompanied by a beautiful slide show, Susan Wilson—the Official House Historian of the Parker House—traces the history of Christmas celebrations, which were discouraged and even banned in the Puritan stronghold of colonial Boston. Wilson explains how and why Christmas finally began to be embraced in the mid 19th century, and how Charles Dickens' arrival in 1867—when he made his home at the Parker House for 5 months—really added fuel to the yule log.

'The Day After' focused on the city of Lawrence, Kansas. A record audience estimated at more than 100 million Americans tuned in, including then-President Ronald Reagan.

Join Revolutionary Spaces at the Old South Meeting House for a discussion with Dr. James Fichter of the University of Hong Kong to mark the publication of his new book Tea: Consumption, Politics, and Revolution, 1773–1776. Dr. Fichter is joined in conversation with Dr. Nathaniel Sheidley, President and CEO of Revolutionary Spaces.

In his new book, Dr. Fichter reveals a new dimension of the Boston Tea Party by exploring a story largely overlooked for the last 250 years—The fate of two large shipments of East India Company tea that survived and were drunk in North America. The book challenges the prevailing wisdom around the tea protests and consumer boycotts while showing the economic reality behind political rhetoric: Colonists did not turn away from tea as they became revolutionary Americans. While history records the noisy protests and prohibitions of patriots, merchant ledgers reveal that tea and British goods continued to be widely sold and consumed.

By bringing different locations and events into the story and reinterpreting old ones, Dr. Fichter shows how the continuing risk that these shipments would be sold shaped colonial politics in the years ahead. He also hints at the enduring potency of consumerism in revolutionary politics.

This program is made possible by the generous support of The Lowell Institute.

JAMES FICHTER is Associate Professor of European and American Studies at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses on maritime history, the revolutionary Atlantic, and World War I. Fichter is also the author of So Great a Profit: How the East Indies Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism (Harvard, 2010) and editor of British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East: Connected Empires across the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Palgrave, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, 2019), as well as author of various articles. His next monograph, Suez Passage to India: Britain, France, and the Great Game at Sea, 1798-1885, examines the interconnections between the British and French Empires in Asian waters, from Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 to the Sino-French War in 1885. He received a BA in history and international studies from Brown University in 2001, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2006.