The Tarring and Feathering of Thomas Paul Smith: Common Schools, Revolutionary Memory, and the Crisis of Black Citizenship in Antebellum Boston
The Tarring and Feathering of Thomas Paul Smith: Common Schools, Revolutionary Memory, and the Crisis of Black Citizenship in Antebellum Boston hilary j. moss N 7 May 1851, Thomas Paul Smith, a twenty-four-year- O old black Bostonian, closed the door of his used clothing shop and set out for home. His journey took him from the city’s center to its westerly edge, where tightly packed tene- ments pressed against the banks of the Charles River. As Smith strolled along Second Street, “some half-dozen” men grabbed, bound, and gagged him before he could cry out. They “beat and bruised” him and covered his mouth with a “plaster made of tar and other substances.” Before night’s end, Smith would be bat- tered so severely that, according to one witness, his antagonists must have wanted to kill him. Smith apparently reached the same conclusion. As the hands of the clock neared midnight, he broke free of his captors and sprinted down Second Street shouting “murder!”1 The author appreciates the generous insights of Jacqueline Jones, Jane Kamensky, James Brewer Stewart, Benjamin Irvin, Jeffrey Ferguson, David Wills, Jack Dougherty, Elizabeth Bouvier, J. M. Opal, Lindsay Silver, Emily Straus, Mitch Kachun, Robert Gross, Shane White, her colleagues in the departments of History and Black Studies at Amherst College, and the anonymous reviewers and editors of the NEQ. She is also grateful to Amherst College, Brandeis University, the Spencer Foundation, and the Rose and Irving Crown Family for financial support. 1Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Julian McCrea, Benjamin F. Roberts, and William J.
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