Many students from the Boston area suspect that this city played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement because of its progressive past but lack the facts of the events and situations that rocked the peace of this city then and now. According to one student, “I know about Civil Rights in the south and the march on D.C. I just assume there was stuff going on in Boston because when there is conflict or dispute we are usually involved. The American Revolution began in here, and the Abolitionist movement had a strong hold. We are historically more progressive then most of the country.” ??New Orleans native and Katrina Survivor Lynnell Thomas was surprised at the dearth of knowledge regarding Boston’s role in Civil Rights movement in her American Studies course “The Sixties”, where most students saw the movement for racial equality as “a strictly southern phenomenon” from a culture completely separate from Boston’s liberal self- image. Other students were vaguely aware of the busing conflict of the 1970s that split the city politically. She soon found that this denial of history was not relegated to the youth. There was a conference of academics at the JFK Library in 2006 titled “Power and Protest: The Civil Rights Movement in Boston, 1960-1968” that she attended and was again surprised to hear the organizers lament on how difficult it was to get people to support something that may tarnish the city’s image. According to Professor Thomas, “Fears of dredging up painful memories, marring the city’s image, or confronting the persistent legacy of racism in Boston often hamper present day efforts to combat discriminatory housing practices, segregated and unequal schools, and racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare.” Dorchester happens to have a lengthy history in social activism. Lucy Stone was a famous leader in the Womans’ Sufferage Movement and she lived in Jones Hill. She was the first woman from Massachusetts to earn a college degree and was a prominent abolitionist and woman’s rights activist in the last half of the 19th century.??It was this same neighborhood in which the namesake of the William Monroe Trotter Institute lived and his house on 97 Sawyer Ave is currently a historical landmark. Trotter, among many things, helped establish several movements and organizations around the turn of the century that defended the rights of African Americans against federalized racism (For more on the Trotter Institute, be sure to check out next week’s Mass Media). It was also here in Dorchester that Martin Luther King lived during most of his time at BU getting his doctorate. His apartment was a hub for meetings that helped unify and plan the Civil Rights Movement.
?Thomas I. Atkins was a powerful leader and was the first African-American elected to serve on the Boston City Council in 1967. He was a Harvard Law graduate and it was due to his advice that the 1968 mayor of Boston, Kevin White opted not to cancel a James Brown concert scheduled the day after MLK’s assassination. In major cities across the?nation on April 4th and 5th massive riots broke out pitting citizens against police and each other. The Mayor feared that encouraging a crowd of 12,000 disenfranchised youths?to head to downtown Boston would lead to riots and destruction of the Hub. Atkins argued that to do this would enflame the situation even more. They decided to televise the event instead, encouraging citizens to stay home and keep the streets peaceful. James Brown was, at the time, seen as a radical performer who would not compromise his “blackness” to placate a white mainstream audience. An orphan and self-made man, he was seen as a symbol of empowerment against the oppression keeping minorities muted, his attitude of nonconformity inspired many young blacks to rise above the obstacles of racism and poverty and demand equality. Brown was enraged that his concert was to be televised because nobody was going to pay when they could sit at home and see it for free. It was Atkins who negotiated with the city eventually convincing them to pay for the performance. At this time he was also Executive Secretary of the Boston Branch of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and he was one of Boston’s loudest voices against political leaders and citizens who denied the inherent segregation alive in the city. He later became President of the same branch. He was a?champion of instituting the federally mandated school desegregation in Boston and served as council in the 1970 Morgan v. Hennigan case. Part of the reason for the racial tension within Boston was that after WWII millions of blacks migrated North to fill the impoverished centers of cities as whites moved to suburbs. The tax base shifted and the?cities coffers took a major hit. The schools also suffered and became a symbol of the de facto segregation that saw poor whites heading to different schools than poor minorities. The city’s white population had entrenched political representation and thus had more pull over where the city’sbudget went.
?According to UMB Professor Judy Smith, there was frustration within the African American community as the right to vote could not overcome the non-electoral racism inherent in?housing assignments, schools, and police brutality. Black history was not being taught, there were walkouts, and parents called upon the courts to bring justice to their children. Busing, in which students were transported to schools outside their district, was seen as a solution to the neighborhood based segregation, yet many were vehemently opposed to this plan. Whites had long been accustomed to the way things were and many felt it unconstitutional for their children to be taken across district lines. Racial tensions erupted and led to several brutal incidents of racial violence such as those captured by the Pulitzer Prize winning photo “The Soiling of Old Glory”, where a black lawyer was beat down by white teenagers with one of them using an American flag to club him in the face. In retaliatory violence, the next day a group of black youths cused a white man driving through Roxbury to crash, dragged him out of the car and severely beat him. At present, students at UMB are still hard at work creating a world without racism and according to one student whom has been critiqued for complaining without a solution remarked “How else are we going to come up with solutions unless we discuss the problems?” This student, who wishes to go by the name Mr. X, critiqued how MTV and VH1 show people who live shallow lives because corporate media “is afraid to have someone like Malcolm X who is too conscious” of the injustices still rampant today.
?Student leader of the Hip Hop Initiative Diderot Jean Phillipe sees hope in the potential for black communities to nurture entrepreneurs and education by asking the question “how can we again be self sustainable?” He draws inspiration from what happened during the Harlem Renaissance, where New York saw the opening of a fleet of black-owned businesses and the subsequent revitalization and empowerment of that community.
?Jean Phillipe sees the biggest challenge for young leaders as being the struggle to surround yout with enough positive influences for them to believe in their potential for growth enough to overcome economic and social repression. Reflecting upon the battle ahead as he graduates next semester, he believes that “one way to destroy people is to have them lose faith against themselves and developing consciousness of the invisible forces which oppress is the first step in awakening people to the reality that a life of self-determination is possible.”