Massachusetts Governer Mitt Romney signed a bill on May 20 repealing a 330-year-old
state law that said American Indians were not allowed to enter the City of Boston
unless they were chaperoned by a "musketeer." According to the Boston
Globe, the law had been in enacted during King Philip's War of the 1670s, which
pitted colonists against American Indians under a leader known as King Philip,
but had no validity under the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.
A coalition of Indian groups and activists lobbied for the law’s repeal before the July 2004 Democratic National Convention and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and the Boston City Council signed a petition for its repeal, but the legislation did not become a priority for the council until UNITY, a coalition of American Indian, Hispanic, Black, and Asian professional journalist associations, told lawmakers that it refused to consider Boston for its 2008 convention if the law was still in place. The convention is expected to bring more 8,000 journalists and roughly $4.5 million in revenue to its host city.
