Section IV: Historical Connections, Sociological Frameworks, and Literature Review

Social forces or “G-GREASES” play a key role in everyone’s lives. In Boston, different social forces affect(ed) groups of youth in very similar ways, they stimulated the group of youth to stand up and make a change for themselves and others. In my senior capstone class, we learned about three groups of youth that stood up for a change. These groups were: the Lowell Mill Girls, students of Boston Busing, and DSNI. Many social forces impacted all three, but the main ones were: economics, government, and social/cultural values.

      The Lowell Mill girls were a group of girls that worked in factories and were affected by industrialization. Industrialization was when the entire world moved from body labor to machine labor. Although most of the work was done by machines, people still had to watch over the machines. Lowell Mill Girls decided to make a change when their wages were lowered but they had to do more work.  On June 21, 1974, desegregation of all Boston Public Schools was put in effect by Judge Garrity. This ruling came 7 years after the Brown vs. Board of Education case, which led to the desegregation of South Public Schools. All was fine until South Boston (predominately white) and Roxbury (predominately black) found out they had to integrate. With the help of Louise Day Hicks, member of the School committee and later elected a chairwoman, the