{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.024594453165881738, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004186289900575615, 'mean_word_length': 5.570446735395189, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Strange Bedfellows: Nativism, Know-Nothings, African Americans, and School Desegregation in Antebellum Massachusetts

Rapidly changing economic conditions fueled a bewildering set of dislocations. The value of labor for the working class fell. The population of the foreign born increased exponentially, their numbers pregnant with an unfamiliar culture and a religious faith despised by most Americans. Urban life was beset with poverty and crime. Traditional social and political institutions were incapable of redressing or even containing a growing discontent. These factors and other forces translated into a rage directed at the elite and their failed institutions, spawning a populist revolt that manifested itself in racism, hatred, xenophobia, exclusion and a determination to overthrow the old order and start afresh. That was Massachusetts in the early 1850s. African-Americans—chafing at life at the margins in a state that nevertheless offered the best overall quality of life in the nation—sought equality of education for their children in fully integrated schools. Utilizing boycotts, nonviolent tactics and an alliance with elite whites who objected to inferior “separate but equal” schools, a movement formed driven by a charismatic yet unassuming leader that demanded desegregation. That too was Massachusetts in the early 1850s. At the nexus of these unlikely arcs, the nativist American Party, known popularly as the “Know-Nothings,” capitalizing on rampant anti-Irish and antiCatholic sentiment, swept the state, capturing the legislature and the governor’s office. Paradoxically, it was this legislature dominated by Know-Nothings—who rose to power plying the politics of exclusion—that outlawed segregation in schools across the state. The improbable cooperation between nativists and champions of African-American equality, and its highly significant result, is the topic of this paper.