Read in text form below or click on the arrow above to listen to the audio recording.
NARRATED BY MICHAEL RUDERMAN
INTERVIEW WITH CRYSTAL HAYNES COPITHORNE, JOURNALIST & ARLINGTON VOLUNTEER
Welcome to the Voyage & Tea banner, which features an illustration of a colonial sailing ship and the tea plant grown in southern China and shipped around the world.
The Boston Tea Party is one of the iconic events of the American Revolution. Colonists angered by tax policies imposed by an absolute monarch and a parliament where they had no representation dumped tons of valuable tea into Boston harbor. One of the world’s most desired plants, the tea had just arrived from China. Its long voyage was undertaken to satisfy cravings for a sophisticated stimulant that was a focal point for social gatherings and a ritual of daily life. How many in Menotomy were addicted to this plant by the time of this theatrical protest against autocracy? At that time, colonists drank 1.2 million pounds of tea every year!
In 1773 the British government gave the British East India Company a monopoly on the importation of tea to the colonies, cutting out local merchants such as John Hancock. On top of this, Parliament retained a tax on tea after dropping other controversial taxes on imports. These actions were pronounced to be tyranny and a band of patriots carefully planned the Tea Party as a highly visible – although anonymous – protest to send a message to the crown. Next they took a radical stand: they refused demands to pay compensation. In heavy-handed retaliation, England passed the “Coercive Acts.” These included suspending local government, doubling the troops occupying Boston to 4,000 soldiers, and closing Boston harbor to all commerce. No ship could come in or out, including those carrying tea.
The reverberations of these events were felt in Menotomy. Tensions that had been building for a decade between King, Parliament and rebel leaders came to a head on April 18, 1775. Royal soldiers marched through Menotomy on a mission to seize military stores in Concord but things got out of hand. They provoked an uprising that swelled and spread and a rebellion was well and truly launched the next day.
Closing Boston’s harbor was a local calamity. Ships transporting and trading goods were the engine of the region’s wealth. Salt pork and fish produced by local farmers and fisherman were shipped in barrels to sugar plantations in the West Indies, and textiles and luxury goods arrived regularly from Britain. But the most lucrative cargo in the Atlantic trade was enslaved human beings. The first of many thousands of enslaved African people arrived in Boston aboard a ship named Desire in 1638. Over the next 130 years Massachusetts ships would also send indigenous people captured during colonial wars to enslavement in the West Indies, often returning with enslaved Africans.
Fighting in the American Revolution – on either the British or colonial side – was one way enslaved people could secure their freedom. There was a substantial population of free people of color in 18th century Massachusetts, including abolitionist Prince Hall, whose petition to the Massachusetts Legislature pointed the way to the new Massachusetts Constitution. Passed in 1783, it wrote the ideals of freedom for all promoted during the American Revolution into law, providing the basis for Quock Walker and other enslaved people to free themselves by challenging their status in court.
The unjustness of tea taxes was one of the triggers of the American Revolution, and while liberty for all prevailed in Massachusetts shortly after, it would take nearly another century for the unjustness of enslavement to trigger a civil war.
And today, our nation continues to grapple with racism and inequality. To learn how local activism can lead to positive change, listen to our audio tour to hear from Crystal Haynes Copithorne, a journalist, former Arlington Human Rights Commissioner and an amazing volunteer here in Arlington.