A Boston memory -- on the event of white supremacists meeting in Boston

<I'm reposting this little memory of Boston, which was my response to that thread about the South Boston meeting.>

I lived in Boston in the late 1970s, and frankly this story does not surprise me at all. Before moving to Boston, I had lived in pre-civil rights Virginia, and afterward I would live in Johannesburg and even crazy-ass Rustenburg and Zeerust, South Africa during the apartheid years and traveled through the deep south in the 1980s.

But Boston in the late 1970s was the most racist, dangerous city I've ever lived in.

It's interesting that someone in the supremacist meeting thread cited the number of Black basketball players and coaches that Boston hired from the 1960s onward. But one thing the black athletes in Boston complained about in the media in the late 1970s was that they could not go to baseball games or other sport events for fear of random mob violence against them.

I think it's fair to say that Boston in the late 1970s, during their desegregation battles, may have been one of the most dangerously racist cities in all of American history. What made Boston unique, compared to say Johannesburg, Rustenburg or Zeerust during apartheid, or Richmond and Farmville, Virginia pre civil rights era, or Shreveport, Louisiana or Meridian, Mississippi in the 1980s (other shady cities I have been in) was this: Boston was the only place where much of the city was simply off limits to people of color. The moment you stepped into the wrong place, bricks, bottles, insults, fists, and whatever else was available to white citizens would begin flying. As a result, I never met a Black community anywhere in the world that was as demoralized internally and loathed externally as that of Boston in the 1970s -- and that includes the people of Soweto who at least knew history was on their side, while Boston seemed to be in a permanent time warp.

Most of us African Americans from other places knew, and were warned by our colleges, that you simply could not show your face in South Boston, the North End, a Red Sox game or a hockey game -- and that going downtown was always a serious risk as well. I worked as a security guard with several African immigrants who did not understand what was going on and they would travel the city not understanding why the moment they emerged from the subway in the wrong place they were met with a rain of bottles, bricks, and stones.

One night, I took the bus from my apartment in Roxbury to campus (of course, Boston was almost completely residentially segregated, so those of us who moved off campus lived in Roxbury). My bus was mislabeled as going to Cambridge. I was buried in some book when the bus came to a stop and the bus driver said, "last stop." I looked around and was not in the part of Boston I expected to be. The bus driver, who was black, said I had gotten on the bus to South Boston. I begged him to drive me somewhere else, but he said he couldn't. He pointed out that the red line was a few blocks away and added, "If you run, you might make it." Even though it was late at night and I was running, people screamed racial slurs at me during the whole run to the red line.

The emblematic image of Boston in the mid to late 1970s was the photograph of African American lawyer and businessman, Theodore Landsmark, in the downtown civic center, being attacked by a white "civic leader" and anti-busing advocate, Jim Kelly, who held Landsmark while Boston teen Joseph Rakes tried to "run him through" with an American flag on a flag pole, the image being caught by Boston Herald American photographer, Stanley Forman. Landsmark did not know the attackers and simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but random mob violence was quite common.

Despite the image, Kelly ran for and was elected to the Boston City Council a few years later. The victim in the picture, Ted Landsmark, went on to become Dean of Graduate and Continuing Education at the Massachusetts College of Art, and later, president of the Boston Architectural College.

There are a few versions of the photograph, entitled, "The Soiling of Old Glory," but the more widespread seems to be the more closely cropped version, while the less cropped version has the added poignancy of capturing the colonial era "Old State House" in the background:





When I was finally able to leave Boston in 1980, I vowed never to return, no matter what. I had fond memories of Johannesburg after leaving in 1989 and returned there several times, but none of Boston. Unfortunately, I've had to travel to Boston on business three times in the last 29 years -- in my opinion an excessive rate of once per decade -- but hopefully this can be avoided in the future.

and Brookline. For a year I lived with my musician boyfriend who was black. We never had a problem. Not at any of the clubs he played and not when we just hung out in our neighborhood. I know that there was indeed a lot of racism in the Boston area at the time, but as part of an interracial couple, I fortunately didn't experience it.

Btw, I knew and hung out with a lot of musicians back then. Did you know Michael "Salim" Washington? The band, Ellis Hall? Then there was percussionist Kwame (?) Olatunji (son of the famous Nigerian drummer).

There were two extremely talented brothers who played bass and drums and went to Berkeley School of jazz who played around the city a lot but I'm blanking on their names.

My best friend was a jazz d.j., Michael Taylor.

It was a fairly small community.

I was on the Cambridge side of the river in the late '70s and remember that there were certain lines that weren't crossed in Boston. I also remember that the biggest racist jerks that I ever encountered hailed from Southie, Eastie, and parts of Dorchester.

On the other hand, as a white I was routinely cautioned against traveling in some black neighborhoods in Roxbury and Dot because the tension went both ways. There were bottle throwing incidents in Dot when white people made the mistake of driving through certain neighborhoods, but my own experience in those same neighborhoods were never problematic so I don't know how widespread it was.

Busing really poisoned race relations in Boston for a long time. While I'd never be a Pollyanna and say that it's perfect there now, race relations did improve dramatically in the 20 odd years that I lived there. The neighborhood lines blurred in most areas and there was far less tolerance for racist talk and behavior.

I also discovered through my business travel to other American cities that there were other cities where the racism was far more pervasive, just not as openly confrontational. The most eye-opening experience came from studying Fair Housing compliance programs.

The people were fine. Boston is (now) a good city for walking.

But the perception was different when I first moved there. Personally, I hated walking near Northeastern and in the desolate parts of the South End more than the lively areas of Roxbury.

That city is still as racist as any Southern city.

I am from Georgia and I never heard the N word used as much as I did while I was living in Boston in the mid 90s.

That said, I still love the city itself.

http://phish.com/fp/

Watch the whole thing.

I caught moe. last weekend at the new House of Blues on Landsdowne. It was epic.

...I wish that I could break away for that show.


I will be able to see Phish at Merriweather in August.

The setlist from House of Blues was pretty freaking nice...I love a nice Jazz Wank!

It is more than a racist city; it is perhaps the most segregated city in the nation.

The city is, however, far better than it was then. Still bad, but better.

Boston, however, never tried to secede from the Union during the Civil War because they didn't want to fight to free Black people. New York did.

People love to hail it as a melting pot, but some of the borough folks I've met make some of the Southie folks I know look tolerant.

Boston is segregated by class, and unfortunately most of the people that live in the poor neighborhoods are African-American or immigrants.

They tell me it's a lot better than it used to be. But even though they are lawyers and managers in the corporate world, they all still live in either Roxbury or Dorchester.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Draft_Riots#Causes

When the Civil War started in April 1861, New Yorkers quickly rallied behind the Union cause, including a massive rally at Union Square attended by an estimated 100,000 to 250,000. When Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to join the military and fight for the Union, 8,000 from New York City signed up within ten days. The First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861 took a heavy toll on Union forces, including those from New York City, leading to declining enthusiasm and optimism. A large contingent of Democrats in New York City, known as Copperheads, were opposed to the war and favored negotiated peace. New York Governor Horatio Seymour was elected in 1862, running on an anti-war platform.

As the war dragged on, a military manpower shortage occurred in the Union. Congress passed the first conscription act in United States history on March 3, 1863, authorizing the President to draft citizens between the ages of 18 and 35 for a three-year term of military service. Copperheads were dismayed by the news. Their main objection was to national service of any kind, but in terms of rhetoric, they attacked the provision allowing men drafted to pay either $300 (which the poor could not afford) or supply a substitute as a "commutation fee" to procure exemption from service. This led to the derisive term "300 dollar man". In actuality, the draft was designed to spur voluntary enlistment, and relatively few men were formally drafted into service....

The second drawing of numbers was held on Monday, July 13, 1863, ten days after the Union victory in the Battle of Gettysburg. At 10 a.m., a furious crowd of 500 led by the Black Joke Engine Company 33, soon attacked the assistant Ninth District Provost Marshal's Office, at Third Avenue and 47th Street, where the draft was taking place. The crowd began throwing large paving stones through windows, bursting through doors, and setting the building ablaze. Many of the rioters, being Irish labourers, were also opposed to gradualism, because they did not want to compete with emancipated slaves for occupational opportunities....

African Americans became scapegoats and the target of the rioters' anger. Many immigrants and poor viewed freed slaves as competition for scarce jobs and African Americans as the reason why the civil war was being fought. African Americans who fell into the mob's hands were often beaten, tortured, and/or killed, including one man that was attacked by a crowd of 400 with clubs and paving stones, then hung from a tree and set alight. The Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue, which provided shelter for hundreds of children, was attacked by a mob. The police were able to secure the orphanage for enough time to allow orphans to escape.

Ugly, to be sure, but it falls just a bit short of "trying to secede from the Union during the Civil War because they didn't want to fight to free Black people."

And there are plenty of other examples of racism in Northern cities that aren't Boston; e.g., see under Cicero, Ill.

P.S. They have clambakes in East Hampton? Let me guess: they serve Manhattan chowder*...

Not that movies are great historical documents, but it certainly captures some of the cross currents that caused the riots.

The rioters were primarily Irish and Irish American, and their motives were mixed. Partly it was the draft. Partly it was that rich people could buy their way out of the draft. Partly it was that they feared that if the war succeeded and the slaves were freed, there would be a huge increase in competition for low skill labor. The poorest of the poor in New York did not want the slaves freed because they felt they did not want to be flooded with freed slaves on the labor market.\

At any rate, that was the 1860s and Boston went crazy in the 1970s.

Y'know?

understanding of race considering the treatment of Catholics.

Southies, not so much.

were Scots-Irish, BIG cultural difference there.

I'm assuming Scots-Irish = Protestant as it does elsewhere.

I think that most of South Boston's Irish are Irish-Irish, not Scots-Irish.

Many of them were probably here illegally, truth be told. They were just about the sweetest people you could imagine.

It was a very peaceable neighborhood.

All the Irish immigrants I knew had initially moved to Southie, thinking it was the most Irish part of town, moved out the second the lease was up.

(Lace curtain Irish here, and you know what that means)

I've also met your garden-variety South Boston fans of the IRA. They could scarcely be more different.

in part due to embarrassment over images like the above and images of little kids on school buses getting stoned in Southie.

When I moved to Boston in the late 60s from the still largely Jim Crow south, I was absolutely floored by the level of social racism there. The racism in the south was mostly institutionalized in bad law, enforced by gangs of local scumballs in various organizations. It was a bizarre disconnect, since most working class to middle class southern folks had been raised with black household help and really didn't have anything against black people personally, even as they continued to oppress them as a group.

In Boston, it seemed as though it was personal. The Jim Crow laws weren't there, but the whole job and neighborhood structure in the south was, unofficially enforced by social convention. It was weirdly different and hit me like a brick wall.

It reached a crescendo in 1976 with the busing wars in Southie and some of the worst scum being elected to the City Council. Thank goodness most of them didn't go any farther than that.

By the mid 80s, it was almost mellow, although the social mistrust still had (and has) a very long way to go toward being healed.

I don't wonder that people of color who left during any of those years never want to go back. I sure as hell wouldn't.

Yes that's what was so strange about the South. Very similar in South Africa, where farm Afrikaners often grew up speaking an African indigenous language with their playmates. Then at like 12 or 15 or whatever, they were told they are the master race or some such nonsense and can't play together any more. But the basic ability to relate remains.

I was always floored by seeing white people speaking fluent Zulu or Sotho because they grew up on a farm.

Boston was more about unbridgeable divides.

and they all vow never to return. fascinating story...thanks for sharing it.

I didn't bother, like many others who experienced that time and place.

actions, peace be with us all.

... for things that other people do.

To this day, they still say "colored people." And they're friggin' Baby Boomers! :rant:

I suppose we should be happy they're not using other terms.