1919: Introduction–Chapter One

It was the year the nation, still shaken by the events of World War I and haunted by the specter of the Communists having taken over Russia, suffered through the fear that the same threat to democracy was about to take place in the United States.

But, in what historian Cameron McWhirter has called “the awakening of black America,” it was also the year in which African Americans mobilized and organized in new ways to fight the systemic racism of their times and, in doing so, changed America forever by setting the stage for the civil rights movement to follow.

But, in what historian Cameron McWhirter has called “the awakening of black America,” it was also the year in which African Americans mobilized and organized in new ways to fight the systemic racism of their times and, in doing so, changed America forever by setting the stage for the civil rights movement to follow.

Most important, they teach us that the current events holding our attention right now are always preceded by history, that every year is filled with good and bad happenings, and that learning from important events in our past leads not only to an understanding of where we are today, but also to an appreciation of how much progress is yet to be made to ensure all people can fully embrace the benefits of equal justice and democratic ideals that America has always sought to espouse and protect.

The country—primarily a nation of farmers since its beginnings—was moving away from the agrarian way of life and shifting toward a reliance on manufacturing and mass production as innovators like Henry Ford and George Westinghouse revolutionized industry.

It was not to be—1919 would be one of the most tumultuous and event-filled years in the nation’s history.

Almost every major issue the United States would deal with in 1919—immigration, Prohibition, women battling to gain the vote, anarchists, the relationship between business and the government and between the people and the government—would be, in one way or another, part of the story of the Great Molasses Flood.

The neighborhood experienced a dramatic population influx in the 1840s, when the Irish potato famine led to a great migration to America, as tens of thousands of Irish immigrants landed in Boston.

Most newcomers to the North End lived in crowded multistory buildings called tenements, which landlords—eager to make as much money as possible—had hastily erected.

Standing on Copp’s Hill—the highest point in the North End neighborhood—one could look down on hectic streets where hundreds of people wended their way with pushcarts and horse-drawn wagons.

The bustle of the North End was an arresting sight, and in the middle of it all, dwarfing almost every other building around it, stood an enormous structure that seemed completely out of place.

Built four years earlier in 1915, the tank stood fifty feet high and ninety feet wide. It had giant curved sides, was set into a concrete base, and was held together with long rows of rivets.

The most efficient and effective way of making explosives was mixing molasses and water with ammonium nitrate, and there had been an enormous worldwide demand for the sticky substance. Now that the war was over, the demand for molasses for making munitions had plummeted.

The US Congress was close to enacting a law that would prohibit the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages.

Realizing that there would be only about a year between the imminent passage of the Prohibition Act and the beginning of its enforcement, USIA was determined to sell as much rum as possible before it became illegal to do so.

Then, the very next month, the armistice ending World War I had been signed on November 11.

It smote the huge steel girders of the [elevated railroad] structure and bent, twisted, and snapped them, as if by the smash of a giant’s fist.

It smote the huge steel girders of the [elevated railroad] structure and bent, twisted, and snapped them, as if by the smash of a giant’s fist.

Swirling back it sucked a modest frame dwelling from where it nestled beside the three-story brick tenements and threw it, a mass of wreckage, under the [elevated railroad] structure.

Then, balked by the staunch brick walls of the houses at the foot of the hill, the death-dealing mass swept back towards the water.

Then, balked by the staunch brick walls of the houses at the foot of the hill, the death-dealing mass swept back towards the water.

Big steel trolley freight cars were crushed as if eggshells and their piled-up cargo of boxes and merchandise minced like so much sandwich meat.

The more they struggled, the deeper in the mess they were ensnared.

At first too stunned to move, he recovered in time to shout into the phone, “Send all available rescue vehicles and personnel immediately—there’s a wave of molasses coming down Commercial Street!”

With that, he lowered himself into the ooze and, pushing heavy debris aside with every labored step, searched frantically for his mother and brother.

Instead he was stuck, helplessly pinned against one of the walls of the building by a mound of freight cars, lumber, automobiles, and even a horse who had been caught up in the tangle of debris and molasses.

Red Cross volunteers, many of them from Boston’s wealthiest families, arrived in their immaculate white-and-gray uniforms, which immediately turned brown once they stepped into the deep sea of molasses.

It was a grisly scene: crushed buildings; a collapsed elevated railway; smashed wagons, automobiles, and trucks; and in some ways most pathetic of all, hundreds of dead and dying horses.

But even though his deafness prevented him from hearing Merrithew crying out for help, he knew his coworker and friend was in the building and in serious trouble.
Actually, “serious trouble” may have been an understatement.

Experts in explosives and engineering would determine that the tons of molasses in the tank had fermented and produced a gas.

Studies done years later using modern technology have confirmed that the Great Molasses Flood was caused by the outrageously shoddy construction of a tank required to hold 2.5 million gallons of heavy, sticky liquid.

As the time for the trial approached, the Massachusetts Superior Court appointed one of Boston’s most distinguished citizens, Colonel Hugh Ogden, to serve as the auditor who would read the investigators’ reports, hear evidence from witnesses, and issue a final verdict as to whether USIA or any other company or individuals were to be charged with a crime.

Despite this decision, Ogden also decreed that no criminal charges would be brought against the USIA or any individuals.

As for USIA, it maintained that the tank had not come apart because of any negligence on its part, but rather was destroyed by villainous Communists.
Neither Ogden nor any of his advisors placed any credence in USIA’s arguments.

In the years immediately following the flood, Boston’s citizens, most of whom were determined that such a tragedy never take place again, voted overwhelmingly to increase the budget of the city’s building department substantially.

The tragedy and long hearings that followed led Massachusetts to adopt the most stringent regulations for the construction of buildings and other types of structures ever enacted, which would serve as a model for other states throughout the nation.

Nations such as Russia, Poland, and Finland also experienced disastrous economic times and suffered from oppressive governments, leading many to risk the long, treacherous ocean voyage to America.

Victims of vicious anti-Semitism, thousands of Jews were slaughtered in massacres called pogroms.

In March 1733, as the British government attempted to bring its American colonies under stricter control, the English parliament passed the Molasses Act, aiming to force the colonies to buy molasses only from plantation owners in the British West Indies by imposing a tax of six pence per gallon on imports of molasses from non-British colonies.

Nearly every month in 1919 included events that would resonate beyond that one year, bringing changes that echo into our own time.