Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston

HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

In this episode, Seth Bruggeman discusses his recent book Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston. In it, he traces the development of the Freedom Trail and our Boston National Historic Park, examining the inevitable tension between driving tourism revenue to Boston and doing good history. He delves into the politics surrounding our local historic sites during the trauma of urban renewal in Boston and the violence of the busing era that followed. He also argues that the Freedom Trail and related sites have been used to defend dominant ideas about whiteness at several different points in Boston’s contested history.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/251/

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Lost on the Freedom Trail

Seth Bruggeman is an Associate Professor of history at Temple University, where he studies the role of memory in public life, especially how Americans have used objects (in museums, monuments, historic sites, and beyond) to exert control over how we understand the past. Lost on the Freedom Trail is his fourth book.

Seth’s faculty profile | Twitter | Facebook

The New Boston, City of Opportunity, Book I: America’s Heritage Along the Freedom Trail

A butcher at Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market, 1930s-1950s, photo by Leslie Jones

“The Soiling of Old Glory, 1976,” OnView: Digital Collections & Exhibits, accessed June 15, 2022, https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/18274.

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