Common Ground

by J. Anthony Lukas

  One day in early 1969, Colin paid a call on John Lynch, who had recently taken over as Little City Hall manager in Jamaica Plain. A predominantly Irish neighborhood just southwest of downtown, Jamaica Plain had been the first of Boston’s communities to make an open stand against the Southwest Expressway, which was scheduled to cut a swath through dozens of its residential blocks. With Lynch that day, Colin attended a meeting in a church basement to plan a petition drive against the highway. Colin was already anti-highway, but the fervor of those working-class mothers and small merchants determined to protect their homes aroused new sympathy in him. In the months that followed, he added his voice to those of Frank, Salvucci, and Lynch, urging the Mayor to support the resistance movement publicly.

  Finally, in December 1969, Kevin White put his signature to Frank’s bold letter calling on Governor Frank Sargent to proclaim “an immediate halt to any land-taking, demolition or construction now taking place or contemplated for new highways.” Citing “the anguished objections of neighborhood residents,” the Mayor said highway construction caused “the loss of housing, additional air pollution, disruption of long-established neighborhoods, the disappearance of open space and the growth of feeling among our citizens that government is an unfeeling, unthinking monolith unconcerned with their needs and unresponsive to their wishes.” The moratorium proposal was an extreme one, designed in part to seize the highway issue from the Governor, against whom White planned to run the following year. In an editorial, the Globe termed it “about as practical as a petition to the Weather Bureau for a moratorium on snow in New England.” But Colin thought it a useful bargaining position, one that identified the Mayor with the enlightened interests of the city’s neighborhoods.

  Once he had taken the neighborhoods’ side on both the airport and highways, it was natural for the Mayor to support them on a whole range of other issues, and frequently Colin was assigned to such questions. When tenants in Allston-Brighton clamored for rent control, Colin examined legislation in other cities, prepared the Mayor’s rent control ordinance, and lobbied for it in the City Council. Later, he again rode to the defense of Allston-Brighton, helping to block the proposed purchase of a large apartment complex by Boston College, which would have converted the apartments to dormitories. In the Fenway, the South End, and Dorchester, he helped other neighborhoods fend off tax-exempt institutions seeking to expand their plants at the expense of precious open space.

  These neighborhood grievances were blessings in disguise for Kevin White; they were pains he could minister to. For they stemmed from encroachments by external forces and, as Saul Alinsky had long since demonstrated, nothing unites a neighborhood like a well-defined external enemy. It was easy for the Mayor to take stands against such outsiders. Even when he lost, the neighborhoods gave him full credit for trying. But the Mayor’s situation became more difficult when the force seeking change in white neighborhoods was the city itself. Yet this was inevitable. To fulfill his pledges to the black community, White had to encroach on the jealously guarded prerogatives of places like Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, and Charlestown.

  A notable example was the “infill” housing program initiated by the Mayor in March 1968. “Infill” was designed to provide 1,000 units of low-income housing—particularly for chronically ill-housed large families—without having to go through time-consuming land acquisition. It would have erected prefabricated housing on city-owned vacant lots throughout Boston, rents to be subsidized under federal programs, so that most tenants would pay about 23 percent of their incomes. This imaginative program was calculated to provide decent housing for the poor—quickly, cheaply, and without the social problems that invariably resulted when large numbers of the disadvantaged were herded together in high-rise projects. But the program met fierce resistance in the white neighborhoods, much of it rooted in fears that “infill” tenants would be primarily black. One after another, Charlestown, Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, and Dorchester declined to accept “infill.” The only units ever built were in the black neighborhoods—Roxbury and the South End—and most of those were never occupied.

  Time and again during those first years, the Mayor encountered determined opposition from communities afraid that his ambitious projects were merely subterfuges designed to introduce unwanted blacks. Sometimes the fear of blacks cost the communities improvements they would otherwise have welcomed. When the Mayor insisted that a proposed new municipal swimming pool in Dorchester must be open to all races, the residents refused to accept it, claiming that it would become an “inkwell.”

  The most persistent opposition to the Mayor’s programs generally came from Irish neighborhoods. Colin found himself at a disadvantage in dealing with such communities because he knew so little of Boston’s Irish. His only close contact with them had come in the summer of 1964, after his junior year at Amherst, when he got a job at a meat-packing plant in a grubby industrial zone on the edge of South Boston. Filling in for men on vacation, he worked at many jobs: at the strapping machine, chopping hamburger, lifting sides of beef off the hooks and sliding them across the bench to the butchers, or wheeling the steaks from the cutting room to the packing room. The hours were long—7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.—because everyone worked overtime. It was dirty, dreary, monotonous labor which required few skills and therefore attracted the least trained workers, often immigrants just off the boat.

  There were Irish from Charlestown and Southie, Italians from the North End, Lebanese, Syrians, but only a handful of blacks and a few Hispanics. Colin had little in common with most of them, other than bitter resentment of the working conditions and of the foreman who made everybody’s life miserable. At lunchtime, many of the laborers—even middle-aged men with a brood of children to feed—went upstairs to the locker room and gambled their wages away at poker. What money they kept went into cars—big, expensive sedans which struck Colin, who drove his family’s little Nash Rambler, as an irresponsible squandering of their resources. But he felt a certain sympathy for these men, many of whom were clearly stuck in their jobs for life, with nothing else to look forward to until they retired or dropped dead of a premature heart attack.

  With only one of his fellow workers did Colin develop anything like a friendship—a young Irishman named Jim Ryan who came from the industrial city of Chelsea. Colin and Jim usually ate lunch together sprawled outside in the sunny yard, exchanging tales from their very different lives. Jim was an accomplished raconteur and, before long, Colin felt he understood a little of what it was like to grow up in an Irish working-class family in a dirty industrial town. But every evening Colin would climb in his Rambler and head for Lexington. He never visited Jim at home and, once the summer was over, they never met again.

  After that, the only glimpse Colin got of Irish life was on an occasional visit to South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration. There he would gape at the flamboyant figures who marched in the parade or massed along the sidewalks—boisterous men and women, decked out in bottle green, waving shillelaghs, bawling ballads, their faces flushed from frequent pit stops at dozens of saloons along the route. But when the last marchers disappeared over the hill and roving bands of Southie kids began scuffling on the beer-spattered streets, Colin and his friends made a quick getaway.

  Such forays helped form Colin’s picture of the Irish as coarse, unruly, hot-tempered, sometimes violent, but vital, humorous, lively, with intense loyalty to their Church, generous attachment to friends and neighbors, a passionate allegiance to their tight little community. And it was precisely this devotion to tribe and turf that proved so resistant to Kevin White’s entreaties for racial justice. Yet that was an old tension in American life—between the notion of community invoked by John Winthrop when he set out to form a “city upon a hill” and the idea of equality enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.

  Tocqueville recognized that Americans had not one but two political systems: “the one fulfilling the ordinary duties and responding to the daily and infinite cal
ls of a community; the other circumscribed within certain limits and exercising an exceptional authority over the general interests of the country.” For seventy years this delicate balance prevailed, reassuring Americans that the demands of nationalism were compatible with the intimacies of community. In the mid-nineteenth century, the revolutionary settlement broke down, the centralizing impulse dashing on the hard rock of particularism. The battle was joined in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which Lincoln argued that the essence of democratic government was “the equality of all men” derived from natural law, while Douglas insisted it was the “principle of popular sovereignty,” the right of American communities to decide fundamental issues, like slavery, for themselves. Ultimately force of arms held the nation together, but the tug-of-war between community and equality was by no means resolved. In one way or another, it has persisted to this day.

  In the flowering of 1960s idealism, Americans persuaded themselves that community and equality were not only compatible but mutually reinforcing principles. In 1964, with the nation still mourning Jack Kennedy’s death and determined to fulfill his interrupted promise, the Johnson administration secured passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Economic Opportunity Act. The Civil Rights Act empowered the federal government to cut off federal funds to districts guilty of racial discrimination, an unprecedented role for the executive branch in the struggle for racial equality. The Economic Opportunity Act, with its guarantee of “maximum feasible participation” in community action programs, granted poor people an opportunity to control their own neighborhoods. Impelled by the same benevolent impulses, enacted by the same congressional coalition, they were twin expressions of the nation’s conscience at mid-decade.

  But soon the inherent tensions between community and equality reasserted themselves. Civil rights legislation sought to override local law or custom—often equated with bigotry—in the name of a national commitment to human rights, while the poverty program encouraged “community control” as an antidote to bureaucratic centralization. Moreover, it wasn’t long before disadvantaged whites saw that they could invoke, in a spirited defense of their own interests, the very doctrines designed to aid blacks.

  Ironically, nobody had done more to empower the disenfranchised neighborhoods than Kevin White. From the start, his campaign appeals to a “city of neighborhoods,” his Little City Halls, his stands on the airport, highways, and other community issues had encouraged Boston’s neighborhoods to demand self-determination. Nobody could doubt that he was equally serious about his demands for racial equality. But the two impulses no longer pulled in tandem. As Kevin White completed his second year in office and prepared to run for governor, the two great ideals of equality and community were drifting dangerously apart in Boston, with many of the Mayor’s boldest ventures foundering in the gulf between them.

  The Mayor loved popcorn. He gobbled it almost as voraciously as he did politics. Popcorn and politics, his staff suspected, could keep Kevin White going for months on end.

  One summer evening in 1970—during his gubernatorial campaign—the Mayor summoned several senior aides to his Beacon Hill town house to discuss the fate of his embattled “infill” housing program. When Colin arrived, the Mayor was in the kitchen making popcorn and mixing drinks. Colin volunteered to help, and for a few minutes the city’s chief executive and his young aide were alone together. Suddenly the Mayor said, “Colin, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like you to do when I’m governor.”

  “Oh?” asked Colin. The Mayor was still in a three-way race for the Democratic nomination. If he won that, he faced a tough battle against the Republican incumbent, Frank Sargent. The issue seemed a bit premature. But the Mayor rushed on. “I’ve decided I want you as my legal counsel. How does that strike you?”

  “Well, Kevin, of course I’m flattered. But I just haven’t thought about it.”

  “That’s okay. Just remember, I want you with me.”

  Then, with the Mayor carrying the popcorn and Colin the tray of drinks, they climbed to the second floor, where the others were already gathered in the rear parlor: Barney Frank; Deputy Mayor Ed Sullivan; the new redevelopment director, John Warner; and several others. It was a muggy night and the officials had their coats off and their shirt sleeves rolled up as they began laying out options for rescuing the housing program, then stymied by neighborhood opposition. It was a gritty, technical discussion, filled with costs per unit, HUD subsidies, and FHA financing. After ten minutes, the Mayor had lost interest. Soon he was on the telephone with State Treasurer Bob Crane, his close friend and political adviser, and Jimmy Hosker, his campaign manager. As the conference droned on across the room, the Mayor sprawled in his favorite armchair talking politics and gobbling popcorn.

  My God, thought Colin, we’ve lost him. He hasn’t the faintest interest in infill housing. He isn’t interested in governing Boston anymore. All he can think about is that damn governor’s race!

  In two years at City Hall, Colin had learned a lot about politics and even more about Kevin White. By now he realized that White had sought the mayoralty principally as a stepping-stone to the State House. Yet his own interest was in the Mayor as mayor, not the Mayor as candidate, or even the Mayor as governor. He was still fascinated by the task of governing the city, and when the demands of the state campaign made it increasingly difficult for any of them to do that, he grew impatient.

  As the race progressed, not only were the Mayor’s energies diverted from the city, but so were those of his staff. By September, when White won the Democratic nomination, his senior aides were spending 80 percent of their time on the campaign. Then, in mid-October, the Mayor was hospitalized with a perforated ulcer. He emerged on October 24 clearly lagging behind Acting Governor Sargent, who had proved a formidable opponent. The Mayor’s advisers, desperately searching for issues with which to capture public attention, came up with off-track betting as a way to alleviate the fiscal crisis confronting many Massachusetts towns and cities. Overnight, Colin and three other mayoral assistants cobbled up a position paper.

  Last-minute gimmicks notwithstanding, White lost to Frank Sargent that November. To a man whose entire political career had been targeted at the State Housed, it was a grievous blow. Even more devastating was the loss of his own city by a whopping 17,000 votes. Worse yet, the incumbent Irish Catholic mayor of a heavily Irish Catholic working-class city had lost on his own ground to an Episcopalian Yankee acting governor from the horsey suburb of Dover. Indeed, the Mayor had done worst in the heavily Irish neighborhoods of South Boston, Roslindale, and West Roxbury. His own people had publicly humiliated him. He wouldn’t forget that.

  Indeed, for the next few months Kevin White could think of little else. The day after the election, he told aides, “I’m through. I’m not going to run again.” Then he left for a Puerto Rican vacation. Even when he returned, he didn’t—in his own words—“give a shit about governing Boston.” He was preoccupied with his own survival. In January, he hired Tully Plesser, a New York pollster, to test the political waters for him. The next month, Plesser came up with encouraging news. The Mayor wasn’t dead politically, but he would have to remake his image. His constituents regarded him as too liberal, too pro-black, too faddist and flighty. Most important, in a city that prided itself on its toughness, he was regarded as weak and indecisive. Plesser urged the Mayor to “toughen up.”

  Armed with this judgment, the Mayor sought reelection. But he took Plesser’s advice to heart. For the rest of the year, “toughness” was Kevin White’s watchword. His advertising relied on slogans emphasizing his fighting spirit: “When the landlords raised rents, the Mayor raised hell,” and “Logan Airport had plans to tear up East Boston, the Mayor tore up the plans.” Some of the shift was pure flackery, deft manipulation of the Mayor’s image. But some of it was real. For White himself sensed that it was time to edge to the right. In part, this reflected a change in his audience. For three years, as a mayor running hard for governor, he had devised
his political messages with one eye cocked toward the liberal suburban vote. Now, compelled to seek reelection in the city, he beamed his messages at ethnic, working-class Boston. This realignment was underscored by the departure of some of the aides who had given White’s first term such a liberal tone—Special Counsel Bill Cowin, who left in May 1969 to head the State Public Utilities Commission; BRA Director Hale Champion, who in July 1969 became vice-president of the University of Minnesota; and most important, majordomo Barney Frank, who resigned after the November election, ostensibly to return to Harvard. The effect of these and other liberal defections was reinforced by a new aggressiveness among the traditionalists on the Mayor’s staff—old-liners like Ed Sullivan, Larry Quealy, and Barbara Cameron, who had bristled at the “trendy” tone of the first three years. Soon after White’s loss to Sargent, this “conservative caucus” began compiling a briefing book that emphasized many of Tully Plesser’s points.

  So a new Kevin White began to emerge during 1971. He downplayed his Office of Human Rights, Model Cities, and other programs designed to aid the black community, while talking tough on crime and drugs, beefing up the police, and promising to hold the line on taxes. Symbolic of his new stance was White’s campaign for the removal of Doris Bunte from the Boston Housing Authority. Three years earlier his appointment of Mrs. Bunte—a black tenant in the Orchard Park housing project—had been seen as a commitment to give public housing tenants a powerful voice on the Authority, and with two others of similar views, she formed a tenant-oriented majority on the board. But soon that trio and the Mayor found themselves at odds over patronage. Determined to regain control, White charged the outspoken Mrs. Bunte with five acts of misconduct. After a thirteen-day “trial” before the Mayor and City Council, she was found “guilty” of three charges and removed from the board, only to be reinstated by a court. The Mayor said Mrs. Bunte had been dismissed because “she did not bring about reform,” but others saw the episode as a clear signal that henceforth the Mayor would adopt a more skeptical attitude toward the black and the poor. To Colin Diver, the Bunte affair was “a colossal mistake—embarrassing, humiliating, and stupid.” Partly a personal vendetta, partly a power play, partly a political message, it was the Mayor at his worst.