Judith Black

(This is the first in a series of columns from Defending Democracy in Marblehead exploring our town’s past and present as it has echoed and often rejected national politics, trends and values.) Nestled along the rocky North Shore of Massachusetts, our town possesses a character that has always been shaped by its people’s deep attachment to autonomy, self-governance and resistance to overweening authority. In terms of social justice, from colonial times through today, it has also engendered deep patterns of exclusion and complicity, as well…