Forum Post: Farmers Occupied the Courts Early in the American Revolution

The occupation of Wall Street is in the grand tradition of the Occupation of the Courts at the onset of the American Revolution. It's not widely known among the American public, but early in the American revolution-- before Lexington and Concord-- thousands of farmers in Western Massachusetts occupied the courts. The farmers had come to believe that the courts and its judges no longer represented them-- that these judges had no care for them, nor were they accountable. The American farmers tired of the foreclosures that were taking their farms and their neighbors farms-- of the courts functioning as the tools of the rich and greedy, lending itself to "the machinations of some designing persons in this Province, who are grasping at power, and the property of their neighbors."

And sometimes armed and sometimes not, the farmers literally occupied the courts--sometimes blocking the doors with thousands, sometimes entering the court itself and filling it completely, refusing to allow those courts to begin session. Not in session they could no longer wreak injustice. The English appointed judges did not sit again, and British rule never returned to that part of our country. In 1774 courts in Worcester, Great Barrington, Plymouth, Taunton, Concord and Springfield were occupied and shut down.

See: A People's History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence, Ray Raphael, p. 47-51