The Boston Tea Party,

1975

The Boston Tea Party represents an event foundational to the American mythos, while it also reflects on the vicissitudes of history. Hirsch described the Boston Tea Party as a “wild paradox: what was outrageous vandalism two centuries ago, we today cherish nationally as a symbol of the free soul.” But this act of political protest was also tied up with racial hierarchies: The activists disguised themselves in “redface,” both self-identifying with the Indigenous population as true “Americans” and playing into stereotypes of Native Americans as destructive savages.

In Hirsch’s words, the print valorizes “the vigilant activism that fed the spirit of our forebears.” A labor activist himself, Hirsch knew firsthand how such activism could be suppressed. He spent 1949 to 1955 in exile in Paris because he was labeled a communist sympathizer by the US government during the anticommunist fervor known as the “Red Scare.”