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.

Celebrating one of America’s greatest female novelists, this biography brings to life Willa Cather -- her artistry and endurance, her immigrant family and the prairies on they lived, and her trailblazing success as a journalist and writer.

In the early 20^th century, Willa Cather leapt into the forefront of American letters with the publication of her novels O Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918). At the time, she was well into middle age. Her success followed years of working in journalism in Nebraska, brief spells of teaching, and editorial work on magazines. Chasing Bright Medusas is her story told by of another mature and highly accomplished writer, the award-winning biographer Benjamin Taylor, a lifelong lover of Willa Cather’s work. Taylor’s elegant exploration of her artistic endurance and of her early years and family, bring us back in time to portray vividly the challenges of being an immigrant family, a woman, and a literary trailblazer -- one the greatest authors of the twentieth century.

The approach of the 250th anniversary of American independence has led scholars to reexamine the British Empire and the events of the imperial crisis that are generally understood to have led to the American Revolution.   The panelists of the keynote session  “Could the Empire Have Been Saved?”  engage this issue by discussing the problems in the empire revealed by resistance to imperial authority in British America between 1764 and 1774.  What kind of empire was it?  What was the character of British policy in the colonies?   Was the imperial crisis really a general crisis that touched all colonies and all members of British American society?  What was driving events forward?  Was the American Revolution really inevitable?  And might better decisions have avoided it?   In engaging  these questions, the panelists aim to reveal the broader implications of new thinking about the British empire and the coming of the American Revolution.

This keynote is part of the conference on the theme "Empire and Its Discontent" hosted by The David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society

Christopher Brown is a historian of Britain and the British empire, principally in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with special emphasis on the comparative history of slavery and abolition, and with secondary interests in the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Age of Revolutions. His current research centers on the history of European experience on the African coast at the height of the Atlantic slave trade, and continues early commitments to the rise and fall of slavery in the British Empire. Published work has received prizes in four distinct fields of study – American History, British History, Atlantic History, and the history of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance. Completed projects include Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (University of North Carolina Press) and, with Philip D. Morgan, Arming Slaves: Classical Times to the Modern Age (Yale University Press). He has written as well for The Nation, The New York Times, and the London Review of Books, among other outlets.