page_title: Scollay Square
section_title: Abolitionism
hierarchical_section_title: Scollay Square / History / Abolitionism
caption_attribution_description: Boston Police Strike, 1919
context_page_description: Scollay Square was a vibrant city square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It was named for William Scollay, a prominent local developer and militia officer who bought a landmark four-story merchant building at the intersection of Cambridge and Court Streets in 1795. Local citizens began to refer to the intersection as Scollay's Square, and, in 1838, the city officially memorialized the intersection as Scollay Square. Early on, the area was a busy center of commerce, including daguerreotypist Josiah Johnson Hawes and Dr. William Thomas Green Morton, the first dentist to use ether as an anaesthetic.
  As early as the 1950s city officials had been mulling plans to completely tear the Square down and redevelop the area. Eventually more than 1,000 buildings were demolished and 20,000 residents were displaced. With $40 million in federal funds, the city built an entirely new development there, Government Center.
context_section_description: Scollay Square was also a flashpoint for the early abolition movement.  Author William Lloyd Garrison was twice attacked by an angry mob for printing his anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, which began publication in 1831. Sarah Parker Remond's first act of civil disobedience occurred in 1853 at the Old Howard when she was refused the seat she had purchased but was instead seated in the 'black' section. Many of the buildings in the area in and around Scollay Square had hidden spaces where escaped slaves were hidden, as part of the Underground Railroad.
caption: Militia tries to maintain order in Scollay Square during the 1919 Boston Police Strike
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