Oscar Handlin, a historian and academic who wrote extensively about civil rights and immigration, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952 for The Uprooted, his study of immigrants in the eastern cities of America (which was written from the perspective of the immigrant).

His book on Boston’s immigrants—in which he  traces the social history of politics and prejudice—is revelatory.

Though Bostonians could not do without the Irish servant girl, he writes, distrust of her mounted steadily. Natives began to regard her as a spy of the Pope who revealed their secrets regularly to priests at confession.