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Time to rename Maverick Square?

Turns out Maverick was a slave owner in fact, the first in Massachusetts. CommonWealth makes the case. Earlier, Dudley Square was renamed Nubian Square because Dudley was a slavery-allowing governor of Massachusetts in its colonial days.

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Where did you hear that Dudley owned slaves? I recall the explanation for the Nubian Square renaming was that Dudley was governor at a time when slavery was legal in Massachusetts, not that he owned slaves himself.

Indeed, the article you linked says, “Local community activists had argued that as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Dudley perpetuated slavery.”

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Thanks. Reference fixed.

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Magoo thought the The blue line stop was called maverick because it is near the airport. Magoo.

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Actually the stop called "Airport" is near the airport.

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Interesting and sad history. Love this at the end:

Annamarie Hoey is a sixth-grade student at the Rindge Avenue Upper School in Cambridge. Matt Hoey, her father, is a lifelong Boston area resident and helped her with research and editing on this essay.

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Since The Hoey's are from Cambridge. Let's rename Cambridge.

Cambridge took its name from Cambridge England owing that there was a university in the then Newtowne.

Cambridge University and the community in which it lies has admitted that it benefitted greatly from slavery.

Therefore Cambridge here in Massachusetts is tainted by this stain of sin just like Maverick Square.

We need to change the name at once.

I'm thinking Potificatia might be a good name, because there is nothing more Cambridge than someone from Cambridge casting aspersions on someplace else because of their wicked misdeeds without looking at their own first. Besides Marblehead and Athol are already taken.

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Can anyone articulate an argument for keeping the name Maverick Square besides some version of the “our history is soooo steeped in white supremacy and the founders were so super racist that virtually everything with a European name in this country is a testament to African enslavement and it therefore would be inconvenient to hold a light up to that abhorrent history and re-evaluate the near-endless amount of current place names, so let’s just forget about it”?

Because that is the only argument that has been articulated here, at least 3 times. It doesn’t become any more compelling or less tenuous each time it is repackaged and posted.

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[haitian-american]
i always felt like dudley was governer of a prosperous colony so he should remain commemorated. similar to jefferson who famously refused to will the slaves of his large compound their freedom but hes also a founding father so maybe that outweighs his evil.

as far as maverick, i have no idea what he did so maybe changing the station to someone more worthy is a good idea.

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Jefferson, at age 44, also repeatedly raped a 14-year-old Sally Hemming and forced at least 6 pregnancies upon her over her lifetime. I’m not sure anything “outweighs” TJ’s atrocious behaviors, but we have to accept the whole legacy of these founders both good and bad.

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I can see you still have a lot to learn my Haitian Friend. If those are your thoughts on Thomas Jefferson.....He raped his slaves.

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It was never established that any of the Dudleys owned slaves.

Alas, it was never about the Dudleys owning slaves.

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it was always about him being governor and refusing to exercise his authority to extinguish a horrible plight that has centuries of lingering affects to the colony.

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We are renaming Royalston, Bellingham, Winthrop, Phipsburg, Stoughton, Shirley, Belchertown, too?

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and Orange

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but you aren’t making the argument you think you’re making

imagine doing all this research into what essentially amounts to the white supremacist history of the united states, compiling a list of cities and towns whose namesakes owned slaves, and coming away with the conclusion that EVERYTHING SHOULD STAY THE SAME

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(and I'm not referring to the recently-sold speech-recognition company.)

For each of these cases, it's useful to evaluate whether the person involved did more good than harm, or at least whether the the good parts of their life balance out the bad. I think you can make that case for Washington and Jefferson. Maybe also for Winthrop. I don't see it for Maverick.

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people make identical arguments against removal of monuments to robert e. lee, et al.

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For each of these cases, it's useful to evaluate whether the person involved did more good than harm

...it's not that simple. If I do harm to you but (by whatever measure) greater good to someone else, do you think that "balances out"?

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Stick to scales guy or commenting on that Moog you just picked up at the pawn shop.

When I told my wife, an ancient history teacher, that Dudley was being renamed to Nubian Square because of his association with slavery and replacing the name with Nubian she almost passed out from laughing.

See it is about style over context with renaming things. The Nubian Upper Classes supplied lots, and lots of slaves to Egypt, but we forget that part or it gets buried under feelgoodism.

Just as a side note, when the area around Nubian Square looks like Tremont and Dartmouth in 20 years (Don't laugh, if you knew what Tremont and Dartmouth looked like in 1985 there is precedence) and the same forces that changed the South End are happening now , no one will object if the square gets something else because that is what the locals wanted, right?

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told me all i needed to know about what was coming. sorry, didn’t read

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You went to a school with no real academic requirements and until not that long ago, an open admissions policy.

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i sure do hate paying my mortgage by doing the one thing i love to do, on my own schedule. you sure got me

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...it was the sound of a hit dog hollering. I also skipped as soon as I got to the childish insult in the first half-sentence. It's typical John: he goes right for what his limited imagination tells him would hurt the most if he were in the other person's place, given his knowledge of a few superficial facts about this person. It's a particularly childish and limited flavor of misanthropy. I feel truly sorry for anyone who has to deal with this guy in real life.

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I was in your cow town yelling at the redneck Nazis at the corner of King and Main and the ones at the west end of the Coolidge Bridge. Were you? Not all is what it seems.

You are a droll person, probably, the annoying former Goth that really, really, wants to be liked but just deadpans her way through life like a two bit April Ludgate in a desperate please for attention and love

I feel truly sorry for anyone who has to deal with you in real life.

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Right on time!

blahb blah blah your cow town blah blah redneck Nazis blah blah SCREECH blah blah get the town wrong blah blah throbbing forehead vein blah blah spray spit at screen blah blah blah

Did I call it or what? How droll.

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so you know he’s hip to the musics of today

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But that was never established. That the Dudleys allowed slavery is a different thing.

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tomato; potato.

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We should name all Squares roads streets etc. by numbers and letters. If not now,when? If not us, who?
We do have to be careful we dont use a number combination that might be the same as a year something bad happened ...somewhere, but we can do it!

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Nice strawman, pal.

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Get it right.

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Oh good, I was getting worried this discussion would pass without the one joke being made.

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How dare you minimize the use of gender neutral language as a joke, outrageous!

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I thought it was named for the cowboy? Guess not.

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And everyone can be happy.

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Great idea! King County (Seattle) changed which King it was named for, from a slave owner to Martin Luther King.

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That’s actually a good idea.

King County, Washington (Seattle) changed who it’s named for, from a slave owner named King to Martin Luther King.

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James Garner Square.
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Was he ever in Boston for anything? Any tie, however tenuous?

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MlK preached on Warren Street near Dudley Square.

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I mean, George Washington owned slaves, too. Maybe we should rename all 5 Washington streets within Boston. But let's keep them all having the same name, whatever we come up with. It's more fun that way.

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Than an opinion piece on what should be renamed in Eastie “written” by the kid of some long time liberal consultant in Cambridge.

Who got his ass kicked off Twitter and obviously hit up the editor of this Barr Foundation sponsored rag that is only good for letting lobbyists opine in it for their clients for a favor.

Let’s see the Dad tackle Suffolk Downs next.

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Relax, man.

Why not offer up your thoughts on keeping vs re-naming the square instead?

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that I’d be accused of shitting on a sixth grader?

I’m not shitting on the kid, I’m shitting on the hypocrisy of everyone around the kid. If Eastie residents want this change, let them organically change it. Not because some Cambridge lefty consultant wants to impress the other parents at his kid’s school.

A school that got a review like this:

“...the school has below average results in how well it’s serving disadvantaged students”.

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Byron Rushing, former president of the Museum of African American History in Boston, noted, “I’ve really searched, and I’ve found no evidence that Dudley ever owned slaves."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nubian_Square

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Glad to see this ongoing reckoning with the history of slavers here in Massachusetts. Slavery was widespread among the wealthy of the colonial and revolutionary periods here. Another example: John Hancock kept enslaved people imprisoned at his property that is now part of the Massachusetts State House, I believe:

From the Chicago Tribune:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-life-john-hancock-college-p...

"John Hancock is best remembered for his sweeping self-confidence and outsize signature, but there’s more to the story of the wealthy Boston merchant who risked his life for American independence.

The great champion of freedom from Britain owned two or three slaves, according to the 1980 biography “The Baron of Beacon Hill.” ...

John Hancock owned two or three enslaved Black people, including a man named Cato, whom he inherited from his wealthy uncle Thomas Hancock, according to ”The Baron of Beacon Hill,” by William M. Fowler Jr.

“Cato was apparently the last of the two or three household slaves kept by Hancock,” according to the book, which notes that Cato was eventually freed under the provisions of Thomas Hancock’s will.

The biographer goes on to offer the opinion, “It is no special condemnation of John Hancock that he owned slaves; it is merely a commentary on the general insensitivity of the eighteenth century to the evils of the people trade. It is to his credit that in all of his vast business dealings there is no evidence to suggest that he himself ever bought or sold (enslaved people).”

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While you are at it change the name of Lechmere station

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No. Just no.

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For fucks sake

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The longest street in Boston. Mongo like.

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Maverick might have been callous and insensitive but he always maintained that his ownership relationships with other adults were consentual. And a committee of his buddies cleared him as well.

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“Mr. Maverick was desirous to have a breed of negroes,” wrote Josselyn. Maverick told him that the woman repeatedly kicked out a male African slave he had ordered to her quarters to rape her. “This she took in high disdain, beyond her slavery, and this was the cause of her grief.”

Sounds super consensual to me.

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What did you quote that from?

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.

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that’s a wonderful idea; find some new reactionary shit to say

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Why the snark? Its where we're going to go.

Just about every "english" name in our state probably could be tied to something our 2021 woke selves would not like. We need to put the brakes on this before we get ahead of ourselves. At the rate we are going, in 2040, we'll be cancelling stuff from 2025. I mean its already happening.. the 2010s are looking not so woke these days. How soon are we going to get?

At some point soon there will be line in the sand drawn, and we will just have to accept that there are things about our country's history that just don't bode well with modern times. It doesn't make it right or wrong.. its called "it is what it is". Make note of it, understand what it was, and don't let happen again.

That's my big thing with all of this.. "What did we learn from this". Renaming a square doesn't teach us anything, except for bringing light to who ever's name we're going to remove. (and maybe shine light on who they were).

But the family of that person is long gone, and so are the people they affected (in this case, slaves) are long gone also. So how does it make it any better? No one is around to care. The only people who care are people who 'want to feel good' about doing something and are far removed from the families. That's it. Nothing else. And nothing learned.

WHich means in 20 years, people are going to look at some of these renamed squares in the same manner we looked at the previous names....

WHO??????

(meaning, the reasoning for the name or history behind the name is long forgotten)

Bottom Line - Name the squares whatever you want. I don't care.. I don't see much of a learning point here, but go for it if it makes you and others happy.

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Just about every "english" name in our state probably could be tied to something our 2021 woke selves would not like. We need to put the brakes on this before we get ahead of ourselves. At the rate we are going, in 2040, we'll be cancelling stuff from 2025. I mean its already happening.. the 2010s are looking not so woke these days. How soon are we going to get?

as another commenter noted, this argument wasn’t persuasive the first time, and it sure isn’t on the fiftyleventh time either.

At some point soon there will be line in the sand drawn, and we will just have to accept that there are things about our country's history that just don't bode well with modern times. It doesn't make it right or wrong.. its called "it is what it is". Make note of it, understand what it was, and don't let happen again.

that’s kinda where we are now, isn’t it?

But the family of that person is long gone, and so are the people they affected (in this case, slaves) are long gone also. So how does it make it any better? No one is around to care. The only people who care are people who 'want to feel good' about doing something and are far removed from the families. That's it. Nothing else. And nothing learned.

That's my big thing with all of this.. "What did we learn from this". Renaming a square doesn't teach us anything, except for bringing light to who ever's name we're going to remove. (and maybe shine light on who they were).

renaming a square doesn’t teach us anything, except for the lessons that so many Americans refuse to accept and btw are exactly the reason that people are pushing to rename things and knock down monuments

But the family of that person is long gone, and so are the people they affected (in this case, slaves) are long gone also. So how does it make it any better? No one is around to care. The only people who care are people who 'want to feel good' about doing something and are far removed from the families. That's it. Nothing else. And nothing learned.

yet here we are in the year of our lord, 2021, with “anglo-saxon heritage” caucuses in our national government.

WHich means in 20 years, people are going to look at some of these renamed squares in the same manner we looked at the previous names....

WHO??????

(meaning, the reasoning for the name or history behind the name is long forgotten)

yet some people, namely this young sixth grader, did actually research the history of local monuments and were disgusted at their findings.

Bottom Line - Name the squares whatever you want. I don't care.. I don't see much of a learning point here, but go for it if it makes you and others happy.

i don’t care what the squares are named, but please don’t change the names.

personally, i find it very striking that the kids, who of course are learning history for the very first time, can see a problem with local monuments as odes to slave owners. to me, that’s the best reason to think critically about this discussion.

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Bottom Line - Name the squares whatever you want. I don't care..

Yeah, that's nine paragraphs of "really don't care". I'm convinced.

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for getting rid of this particular name.

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Name it after Lysander Spooner.

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Some of us are confused enough already. Not saying we're not supposed to hate Maverick but crikey moses.

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We’re not renaming shit. There’s better ways to do right than erase our fucking history .

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We’re not renaming shit

So you're the boss of everybody?

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LOL.

The square is named after Samuel Maverick who is noted for 1.) living nearby simply because he inherited Noodle Island via his wife 2.) being Massachusetts’s first enslaver of African people, one of whom he forced rape upon and 3.) ditching Massachusetts for Manhattan, leaving no legacy.

Don’t act like this guy is in any way important to local history just because he was one of the first Europeans to live adjacent to something. FFS, Sam Malone has had a bigger historical impact on Boston than Samuel Maverick.

(Also, be honest, how many of us knew Maverick’s first name was Samuel before this thread?)

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Furthermore, let’s rename the square after the Africans that Maverick enslaved on Noodle Island! Oh? What’s that? We don’t know the names of these people because their names were literally ERASED from “our” history?

It’s interesting that so many of us were trained to think that Samuel Maverick is “our” history, but not the unnamed Africans he enslaved. And so many of us cry about “erasing” the names of enslavers—who clearly will remain in the historical record despite any renaming of street, squares, schools, etc—and never mention the millions of Americans intentionally erased from the historical records when European last names forcefully replaced their own names and they appear only on slave schedules as “male, 27” or “female, 15”.

If anyone is truly concerned about erasure, start with those already erased. What do we know about Native Americans who used the island for fishing before temporary occupant Samuel Maverick arrived? Or is that not part of “our” history?

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It’s interesting that so many of us were trained to think that Samuel Maverick is “our” history, but not the unnamed Africans he enslaved. And so many of us cry about “erasing” the names of enslavers—who clearly will remain in the historical record despite any renaming of street, squares, schools, etc—and never mention the millions of Americans intentionally erased from the historical records when European last names forcefully replaced their own names and they appear only on slave schedules as “male, 27” or “female, 15”.

Bravo. Well said.

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An island? An Island?

I need a bigger family.

Where is this Island? This is getting interesting...

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Several islands, actually. One of which was Noddle (not Noodle) Island. Read some local history and geography, especially anything regarding the process of making and filling land.

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Ron, this is the first time my eyes are seeing the double ‘d’ and not the double ‘o’.

I am disappointed it’s not “Noodle’s” Island, but I am thankful for the correction. Today I learned...

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Maverick “inherited” all the land his wife’s deceased first husband owned. So the other guy—whatever his name is—was also “erased”.

First guy has all the wealth, Maverick scoops up the widow. Mediocrity Hall of Fame right there.

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for allowing all these things to happen here.

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