A Chronology of Events
in a
People's History of Boston and Massachusetts

1630-Massachusetts Bay Colony, centered in Boston, is founded by religious dissenters from the Church of England.

1637-Massachusetts Bay militia takes part in a near-genocidal war against the Pequot Indians in Connecticut, involving the burning of a Pequot village and the massacre of men, women, and children trying to escape.

1638-First enslaved Africans arrive in Massachusetts on the ship Desire.

1675-76 Boston militia joins colonial forces in attempting to defeat native warriors under the Wampanoag chief Manomet, called "King Philip" by the colonists. The cost of King Philip's War is high in the white colonizer community, but it devastates the indigenous people of New England.

1747-Boston residents violently resist the "impressments" (forced recruitment) of colonists into the British Royal Navy. Boston residents mob the navy officer and force the ship's captain to flee to a fort on the harbor.

1765-Dissident Bostonians form the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty to resist obnoxious new taxes imposed by the English Parliament. Gangs of mechanics, apprentices, servants, sailors march on November 5 denouncing the Pope and the King and then they destroy a tax collector's house and sack the Lieutenant Governor's mansion.

1770-Boston residents protest the occupation of their city by British imperial troops who shoot and kill five working men on March 5, including Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave of mixed African-American and Native American descent. This event forever known as the "Boston Massacre." The martyrs, memorialized by revolutionary leaders Samuel Adams, become heroes of the revolutionary cause. They are buried together, next to Adams, in the Old Granary Burial Ground on Tremont Street.

1773- The poems of Phillis Wheatley, African-born slave living in Boston, are published in London provoking great concern among defenders of white supremacy and black inferiority, including Thomas Jefferson.

1775-"The shot heard round the world" is fired in nearby Concord as Massachusetts militiamen-"the minute men"-exchange fire with British imperial troops, who retreat to Boston under withering fire. A few months later in the Battle of Bunker Hill a small band of citizen soldiers hold Breed's Hill in Charlestown against wave after wave of seasoned imperial troops before giving way to the British regulars who suffer 700 fatalities in the conflict.

1776-In mid-March, British troops sail away as Boston becomes the first American city to be abandoned by the imperial armed forces. Two months later, the Declaration of Independence is read to an enthusiastic crowd from the Town House (still standing as the Old State House).

1783- Following a decade of repeated petitions by Massachusetts slaves asking for their freedom, Massachusetts becomes the first state to abolish slavery entirely, as the Supreme Judicial Court declares that slavery violates the Declaration of Human Rights that was part of the Massachusetts constitution of 1780.

1788-Boston merchant ship reaches Canton with pelts of sea otter to trade; it with tea and opens the prosperous China Trade.

1796-The African Society for Mutual Aid and Charity is founded among free Bostonians of African descent-dedicated to community welfare and the abolition of slavery in other states.