Aerial view of Brockton in 1921. Robert A. Kane.
RATTLE AND HUSH: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF BROCKTON, MASSACHUSETTS
© Mike Mellor, 2005
In preparing this brief overview of the industrial history of Brockton, I started by mining the trove of information in Harvard University's mammoth library system. Through endless floors and buildings of stacks, many a marble-columned reading room and deliveries from off-site storage I was able to collect the hard data that ties this story together, and for these resources I am grateful. But when I started writing this story amidst these hallowed halls of academia, that's exactly how it came out-hallowed and academic. I had to get back to the source.
Though I have resided in different places over the last six years I am still a Brocktonian, a product of hard times, divergent cultures and an indomitable spirit of good will. Coming home to reclaim the spirit for this piece has reawakened the tools I took away from it; the ability to relate across ethnic and socio-economic boundaries, the self-assuredness that only being an outsider can give, and the strong idea that something so many see to be so awful can actually be fertile soil from which beauty grows.
I'm not talking about high school football championships or award-winning jazz bands, which we have. I'm talking about knowing the difference between a Haitian and a Cape Verdean and loving their cultures just the same. I'm talking about being a white boy at a black church picnic and being treated no different. I'm talking about living and learning from childhood alongside the down and out-the illiterate immigrant, the homeless person, the drug addict-and feeling more akin to them than to any antiseptic concept of American life. It's a story of self-determination and gritty compassion in the midst of what most of our society demonizes.
It is a true-to-life lesson that you can't learn in the homogenous wealth of lily-white towns like Newton and Concord or in the rural backwaters of Halifax or Western Massachusetts. To learn it you can't shelter yourself from perceived danger, but jump right in until you realize the only danger is your own ignorance. This is the great ideal of contemporary Brockton, as opposed to the older ideals trumpeted by the less enlightened people of its origin, that more knowledge and more experience breed more strength.
This, too, is the idea of Outpost Gallery. We channel the old idealism to create something new in the old city, just as these new, different and desperate Americans bring new context to the converted ten-footers, foundries and churches that whisper of Brockton's past greatness. Indeed, the dust we remove from our building flows through our veins.
Some Brocktonians may say that my history is too negative and that it depicts a bleak and hopeless city. This is true to an extent, but it is this past bleakness that keeps Brockton unique to present day. The poverty of the last twenty-five years in particular fertilized the ground for the cultural bounty we can yield today. If you wish to deal honestly with a future better than the present, you must first deal honestly with the past. If you fail to do so, Brockton will forever be twenty miles from Boston and a hundred years behind.
We may not be perfect, but don't let it be said that we aren't one of a kind.
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