Boston was founded in the early 17th century by
Puritans, who held strict moral standards. Boston's second major wave of immigrants,
Irish Catholics, began arriving in the 1820s and also held conservative moral beliefs, particularly regarding sex. Early instances of works being "banned in Boston" extend back at least to the year 1651. That year,
William Pynchon, the founder of
Springfield, Massachusetts—Massachusetts' great settlement in the
Connecticut River Valley—and the former treasurer of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote a book criticizing
Puritanism entitled
The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption. Boston, founded by Puritans and, at that time ruled as a
de jure theocracy, banned Pynchon's book and pressed him to return to England. He did so in 1652, which nearly caused Springfield to align with the nearby
Connecticut Colony. This reputation persisted throughout the Puritan era. In 1700 an objection to the religious doctrines of
Increase Mather carried with it an advertisement that Boston publishers had refused to print it out of fear of Mather. This advertisement caused such an uproar in Boston that many half-hearted denials by Boston printers were collected and printed by Mather's party. The phrase "banned in Boston", however, originated in the late 19th century at a time when
American moral crusader
Anthony Comstock began a campaign to suppress
vice. He found widespread support in Boston, particularly among
upper-class officials. Following Comstock's lead, Boston's city officials took it upon themselves to ban anything that they found to be salacious, inappropriate, or offensive. Aiding them in their efforts was a group of private citizens, the Boston
Watch and Ward Society.
Strange Fruit, the novel of forbidden interracial romance by
Lillian Smith, was also banned by the Watch and Ward Society, and, in 1929, Boston's mayor
Malcolm Nichols and the city censor banned
Eugene O'Neill's
Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Strange Interlude. During the same era, there were also periodic "purity campaigns" on radio, as individual stations decided to ban songs with double-entendres or alleged vulgar lyrics. One victim of such a campaign was bandleader Joe Rines who, in November 1931, was cut off in mid-song by John L. Clark, program director of
WBZ, for performing a number called "This is the Missus", whose lyrics Clark deemed inappropriate. Rines was indignant, saying he believed Clark was over-reacting to a totally innocent song, but Clark insisted he was right to ban any song whose lyrics might be construed as suggestive. The
Warren Court (1953–69) expanded
civil liberties and in
Memoirs v. Massachusetts and other cases curtailed the ability of municipalities to regulate the content of literature, plays, and movies. The last major literary censorship battle in the U.S. was fought over
Naked Lunch, which was banned in Boston in 1965. Eventually the Watch and Ward Society changed its name to the New England Citizens Crime Commission, and made its main emphasis against
gambling and
drugs and far less on media. ==Works banned==