Grad Programs in History & Public History at UMass Boston

April 26th, 1478 marked the ex*****on of the Pazzi Conspiracy, a botched coup attempt that led to the consolidation of a Florentine dynasty and the slaughter of another. At the height of the de'Medici rule of Florence during the Italian Renaissance, the rival Pazzi family sought to murder the defacto Lords of Florence: brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de'Medici. The Pazzi earned the support of the Pope Sixtus IV and the Archbishop of Pisa in their efforts due to the de'Medici's policies which sought to reduce the influence of the Vatican over the city-state. The plot was carried out during Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of Florence, as plotters attacked the de'Medici brothers. Giuliano was killed quickly, but Lorenzo barely managed to escape the attackers and rally the populace of the city against the Pazzi. The incident led to the total consolidation of the rule of the de'Medici family over Florence after a bloody purge, making Lorenzo's rule uncontested. The Pazzi were violently killed in reprisals by a mob, and Florence would wage war for the next two years on the Papal States of central Italy in retribution for the Pope's involvement in the plot.

Columbia Point, the part of Dorchester where our campus is located, has had many names throughout history. Prior to English settlement, the area in and around Savin Hill was known as Mattaponnock to the indigenous Massachusett people for which the modern US state gets its name. Fast forward to the 19th Century, cattle grazing of the-then undeveloped area on the outskirts of Boston earned the area a new name: the Calf Pasture Peninsula. When the city's new drainage system was built in 1884, the pumping station built on the peninsula that still stands on campus came to be known as the Calf Pasture Pumping Station. It was only in 1958 that the Peninsula got its newest name: Columbia Point. The new name was given to refurbish the image of the area before the construction of the Columbia Point housing project in the late 50s. Flash forward nearly 70 years later and Columbia Point is the name that has, so far, stuck.

Learn more about the History of Columbia Point at: https://blogs.umb.edu/pumpingstation/2013/03/17/history-of-the-calf-pasture-peninsula/

April 19th, 1775 marks the anniversary of the first shots fired in the American War of Independence. While the intent of the war evolved as important colonial leaders were yet to be fully in support of independence from the British crown, the day still marks a key juncture in the birth of an independent American government. The engagement of Massachusetts militia with a force of British regulars deployed to break up armed organizations in the colony remains the beginning of armed resistance to British attempts to overturn American colonial laws. For this reason, in 1894, the Massachusetts state government declared that April 19th would be celebrated as a public holiday. In 1969, legal observance of the holiday was moved to the third Monday of April, as to extend the weekend for students and public employees.

In 1942, at the onset of US involvement in World War II, the US constructed hundreds of facilities to hold prisoners of war. One of which was Camp McKay, located on now what is the UMass Boston Harbor Campus’ bayside lot. It wasn’t until 1944 that the first Italian prisoners of war arrived to the camp, however, due to the Allied Invasion of Italy and the subsequent surrender of the Italian Government. Following the realignment of Italy to the allied powers, the U.S. created an organization known as the Italian Service Units (ISU). The ISU offered Italian POWs the option to volunteer and provide crucial labor support to the U.S. government in exchange for a very small stipend. 1,800 ISU workers were held at Camp McKay, and 3,000 worked in and around the Boston area. Following the end of World War II, Italian prisoners were repatriated to Italy. Meanwhile, the barracks were repurposed to be used as public housing in the immediate post war housing developments. The new community, dubbed Columbia Village, was a predecessor to the later Columbia Point and Harbor Point residential developments.

To read more about Camp McKay and the ISU, we recommend reading:
https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2020/07/21/the-italian-service-units-of-world-war-ii-in-boston/

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/italian-service-units-of-boston.htm

https://boshw.us/sign/italian-service-unit-in-boston/?lang=boston

The Mass Memories Roadshow is an incredibly important community participatory archiving project hosted by UMB’s own Healey Library Archives and Special Collections. The program is dependent on volunteers such as Bill Humphrey, a current student in our graduate program. The History Grad Student assisted community members in archiving memories, photos, and objects from The Paul A. Dever School in Dorchester. Humphrey was also kind enough to write a reflection in our UMB Public History Blog, Which can be viewed at: https://blogs.umb.edu/pha/2026/04/13/dever-digitization-day-reflections/

April 17th, 1397 was when Geoffrey Chaucer first presented the Canterbury Tales to Richard II. The legendary anthology of stories, written in Middle English, was likely composed to encourage the court of Richard II to consider English as a courtly language. At the time, French was the primary language of the English court! Chaucer’s magnum opus, despite there being no surviving manuscripts, became the cornerstone of English poetry and cemented Chaucer as a father of late Medieval English literature.

Our own campus castle, the Calf Pasture Pumping station, has a unique story behind its architecture. Planners and designers saw the new pumping station that inaugurated a new sanitation system in Boston as a landmark to demonstrate the modern technological progress of the city. The Station, opened in 1884, was designed by George Albert Clough in a Richardsonian Romanesque Architectural Style. Cough took cues from famous architect Henry Hobson Richardson who pioneered the school and designed Boston's Trinity Church!

To learn more, please check out an excellent 2013 blog article by Eleanor Martinez at https://blogs.umb.edu/pumpingstation/2013/03/27/richardsonian-romanesque-architecture-in-the-northeast/

UMB's Public History Blog has another really interesting article dropping this week. Adrienne M. Naylor's work editing and translating an Albanian language memoir of Ravensbrück survivors has led to its publishing for American audiences. Learn more about Naylor's reentry into work as a historian and discovery of this memoir by Liri Xhunga at https://blogs.umb.edu/pha/field/