Common Ground

by J. Anthony Lukas

  Like most self-conscious South Enders, the Divers had long painted the suburbs with broad strokes of opprobrium. Now they had to make some distinctions, narrowing their search to Brookline and Newton, the most accessible of the outlying districts, the most liberal and heterogeneous. Each had good schools and relatively low crime rates; each was densely populated with people much like themselves—lawyers, doctors, academicians, and artists; each had a cultural and intellectual life of its own.

  The Divers called realtors and pored over newspaper ads, examining any house that sounded promising. But their standards were high. They weren’t going to settle for some ticky-tacky Cape Codder or brick colonial in a modern subdivision; accustomed to their handsome old town house, they were determined to find another Victorian, certainly nothing built after 1900. But weeks of looking produced nothing suitable, and in mid-March they temporarily abandoned the search.

  Then a realtor called to tell them about a house on Church Street in Newton Corner and they drove out to see it. At first glance, it was just what they wanted: a sprawling Greek Revival built around 1850, it had a lot of charm plus many architectural details crying out for restoration. But as they tramped through fourteen rooms on three floors, the Divers thought: It’s simply too big; a family of four would rattle around in a place like that, and it needs too much work. It just isn’t practical.

  That night Joan woke around midnight. For nearly an hour, as she watched the headlights stippling her bedroom ceiling, she thought about what they’d seen that afternoon. If the house was so close to what they wanted, why had they backed away at the last moment? At breakfast the next morning, she said to Colin, “You know that house we saw yesterday? If it’s unacceptable to you, it’s not because there’s something wrong with it, it’s because you don’t want to move. Maybe we ought to come to terms with that right now. We could start by going back to take another look.”

  Now it was Colin who hung back. He didn’t have time, he said; he’d set that afternoon aside to work on their taxes and listen to the opera. So Joan arranged to see the house again by herself. Before going, she prepared a detailed list of all their questions. The house—and the neighborhood—met every one of their qualifications. When she got home at dusk, she urged Colin to make a bid. “Okay,” he sighed. “Let’s do it.”

  That evening, the Divers were scheduled to attend a benefit for “Summerthing,” the city’s annual summer festival. Dining with three other couples, they sorted through the neighborhood gossip, some of it hair-raising, much of it absurd—that bittersweet gallows humor which gave life in the South End part of its special flavor. But Colin and Joan were in no mood for laughter. Behind their forced smiles they were hiding a nasty little secret: very soon they might no longer be South Enders. After dinner, the four couples drove to the Commonwealth Armory, where Buddy Rich and his band, Gerry Mulligan, and Melba Moore were entertaining some 2,000 Bostonians. A large South End contingent was there, dancing, drinking, having a fine time, but the Divers couldn’t get in the mood. Pleading fatigue, they left early.

  The next day, they bid $65,000 on the house. The realtor said they’d probably hear within twenty-four hours, but no reply came on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday. The realtor assured them there was no problem; it was a very good bid, and the owners were just checking with their accountants. But there was still no answer on Thursday or Friday.

  The Divers were growing impatient. Colin wanted to get their South End house on the market as soon as possible; Joan wanted to get the whole thing over with—she couldn’t stand the daily deception of her friends and neighbors. Finally, on Saturday morning, their bid was accepted. That afternoon, Joan went next door and told her closest friend, Linda Trum, “I wanted you to be the first to know,” she said. “I didn’t want you to hear it on the street.”

  It was as if someone had ripped out a wall of Linda’s house. For six years the Divers and the Trums had lived side by side, sharing the pains and pleasures of life on West Newton Street; Linda couldn’t imagine the South End without Joan. An hour later, Anne Dodson stopped by the Divers’ house, and on an impulse, Joan told her too. For a moment Anne was speechless. Then she said, “You know, whenever I think about leaving the South End, I can’t do it because of the people. People like you and Colin. All the efforts you put into the street patrol. I just couldn’t leave people like you.” Joan ached with guilt.

  Later that afternoon, Colin called Doe Sprogis, a South End friend who happened to be a realtor. “I’ve got some bad news and some good news,” he said. “The bad news is we’re leaving the South End. The good news is we’re giving you an exclusive on the house.” Doe was just as ambivalent as the Divers. She was glad to have the listing, but Colin and Joan were South End stalwarts; it would be a less vigorous neighborhood without them.

  Now that the deed was done, Colin wanted to make their old house as attractive as possible to prospective buyers. On the parquet floor in the back parlor was a Ping-Pong table which belonged to their friends the Moriartys from Rutland Square. That very afternoon Colin called Marshall Moriarty and together the two old friends carried the table back across the alley. As Joan watched from an upstairs window her eyes filled with tears.

  Within hours, word of the Divers’ decision reverberated through the bowfront houses. No news could have been more disconcerting to homeowners along West Newton Street and Rutland Square. The Divers were the most active couple in the neighborhood, the most effective manipulators of the city’s bureaucracies. Their defection was widely regarded as evidence that something had gone terribly wrong in the South End, that this brave experiment in city living was foundering on the shoals of urban reality.

  Across the street, Dr. Dan Shannon, a prominent pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital, asked himself: What do the Divers know that we don’t know? Colin and Joan traveled in political circles inaccessible to most of their neighbors. Maybe the Mayor was abandoning the South End; maybe a whole new slug of subsidized housing was destined for Tremont Street; maybe the Divers were getting out before housing values began to plummet. The Shannons had left suburban Dedham because they found life there unbearably “sterile.” For seven years they had labored to rehabilitate a gutted shell they dubbed “Daniel’s Dream.” They loved the South End and refused to face the prospect of moving back to the suburbs. On Monday morning, Dan Shannon met Joan at the Tremont Street bus stop. “When you get out to Newton, Joni,” he said, “you’re not going to need your Freon horn, because if you blow it, there won’t be anybody there to help you. They’re too busy taking care of their swimming pools.” Joan was devastated. It seemed a terrible thing for a close friend to say.

  In weeks to come, other neighbors made cutting remarks. One said that the Divers’ move was “the equivalent of blockbusting,” implying that it could trigger a massive exodus from the neighborhood. Another old friend avoided the Divers for many weeks. Joan began wearing sunglasses, because whenever she saw friends on the street, whether they were sympathetic or critical, her eyes would tear up.

  Colin wouldn’t tolerate suggestions that they were “abandoning” their friends and neighbors. When Paul Garrity suggested as much, Colin snapped, “People who make remarks like that obviously aren’t comfortable with their own neighborhood. If you can’t see people moving in and out as a normal process, if you need other people as crutches to keep you here, then maybe you ought to get out too. Why don’t you examine your own motives instead of criticizing mine?”

  The Divers’ most difficult discussion was with eight-year-old Brad, who had come to love the Bancroft, where he had many close friends. When his parents told him they were moving, he threw a terrible tantrum, weeping, stomping through the hallways, calling them names, insisting that he wouldn’t live anywhere else. Colin said to him, “Brad, you know that we love you very much and wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you. You’ve liked all the decisions we’ve made for you until now—like deciding to send you to the Bancroft—and you’re just g
oing to have to trust us that we’re making the right decision for you now.”

  At first, six-year-old Ned didn’t know what to make of the move. Then, barely a week after the Divers signed an agreement on the Newton house, Ned had an experience which resolved his ambivalence. The boys had a set of keys with which to let themselves in when they got home from school. One afternoon Brad quickly went out again, leaving the door ajar. Seizing the opportunity, a black teenager entered, telling Ned he wanted a glass of water. Instead, he raced through the house grabbing change off bureau tops and tables. Returning from work, Joan heard Ned yell, “Mommy, a robber’s stealing all Daddy’s money.” The youth fled, with Joan in vain pursuit. When she got back, she found Ned at the top of the stairs weeping hysterically. He took days to regain his equanimity.

  Barely $1.50 was taken that day, but it was one of the few times that the sanctity of the Divers’ house had been violated, and it only heightened their anxiety.

  That same week in early April, high school students from Charlestown and South Boston kicked and beat black lawyer Ted Landsmark as he hurried to his meeting at City Hall. Barely two weeks later a gang of black teenagers dragged a white auto mechanic named Richard Poleet from his car in Roxbury and beat him senseless. With tensions reaching an intolerable pitch, Boston seemed poised on the brink of a race war.

  When Kevin White, at the Globe’s prompting, summoned Bostonians to a Procession Against Violence on April 23, Joan had to be there. That Friday morning she left the Hyams Trust, joining the huge throng which swept from the business district across the Boston Common to the assembly point at Charles and Beacon streets. At 11:40, the marchers headed ten abreast up the broad flank of Beacon Hill, past the gleaming State House dome, past the sooty Saint-Gaudens monument to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and his black soldiers who had died together in 1863. Led by the Mayor, Senators Ted Kennedy and Ed Brooke, Governor Mike Dukakis, and other notables, they walked in silence, without banners and placards save for one small sign which hung from the neck of a black man: “Bless the Peacemakers.” Once the marchers had assembled on the red brick of City Hall Plaza, police estimated them at 50,000, the largest such gathering in Boston since the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium. As Joan gazed about her at the salesclerks and bankers, waitresses and housewives, barbers and professors standing solemnly in the April sunshine, she was deeply moved. The procession seemed an expression of all that was brave and beautiful in the city she loved.

  But it wasn’t enough. Within forty-eight hours, the violence resumed, a spattering of racial incidents across the anguished neighborhoods. As the spring wore on, the city’s agony seemed a magnified echo of Joan’s own desperation. She felt an acute sense of loss, as if she were in mourning for someone near and dear. Her grief was relentless, embracing the South End community which had nurtured her these past six years as well as Boston itself, the city to which she and Colin had dedicated their young lives. Joan had never lost a close relative, but she supposed it would feel much like this hollow ache in her chest. By May the ache had grown into a sharp pain, aggravated by a rasping cough. Joan’s doctor told her, “You must be very nervous about something. You’re swallowing a lot of air. That’s what’s giving you the pain.”

  On May 11, she flew to Atlanta for the annual meeting of the Council on Foundations, a league of 793 philanthropies from across the nation. The four-day conference was marked by a heated debate on the position that foundations should take in the racial arena. A study by the Human Resources Corporation concluded that a “woefully inadequate” share of foundation funds went to minority groups. In response, Council directors had framed a resolution on “Foundations and Social Justice,” which read in part: “Whereas, the signers of the Declaration of Independence found to be self-evident these truths: that all men are created equal and that each of us has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness … Be it resolved that organized philanthropy should recognize the urgent obligation to help bring about constructive social change …”

  The Hyams Trust had only one vote on the resolution, to be cast by its secretary, Bill Swift, so Joan wasn’t called upon to take a formal position. But the resolution left her ambivalent. Its principles were impeccable—the very notions which had drawn her to philanthropy in the first place. Inside Hyams and elsewhere in Boston’s charitable community she had urged foundations to become agents for constructive change. Yet the violent crime and social disintegration of the South End had shaken her faith in traditional liberal nostrums. Though she remained committed to equal opportunity and social justice, she was no longer sure that New Frontier—Great Society programs such as public housing, model cities, affirmative action, and court-ordered busing were well-conceived means to those ends. All during the conference, she felt like standing up and shouting, “Isn’t anybody going to say that things aren’t working very well?”

  She was sure of only one thing: that nobody had all the answers. That week, she spent as much time as she could riding around the city, observing how Atlanta had confronted its racial and social problems. Here was a predominantly black city with a black mayor, yet somehow it seemed less tense than Boston, blacks and whites mingling in its stores and public transportation with little apparent friction. She knew there was a large black middle class, boasting its own insurance company and bank, giving blacks the clout to deal with the white power structure. And deal they had—in the famous 1973 school settlement, which created a pattern sharply different from Boston’s. Confronted with a school system already overwhelmingly black, Atlanta’s NAACP had chosen not to press for massive cross-city busing, which in any case would have produced relatively little integration. Instead, it had hammered out a settlement—roundly condemned by national NAACP leaders—which sacrificed integration for black control of the city’s schools (by 1976 there was a black superintendent, a black majority on the school board, and a black board president).

  Atlanta’s trade-off had stirred the old debate between integration and community control. Joan could recognize assets and debits on both sides, but at least here was another approach, free from the conventional liberal pieties. Was black power and self-confidence sufficient compensation for the lost goal of integration? All that week she debated such questions with two friends, a white Atlantan named Linda Copeland, whom she had met years before as a student at Wheaton, and a black woman named Anna Jones, assistant director of Boston’s Permanent Charity Fund, with whom Joan shared a hotel room. Linda, who lived in a handsome white neighborhood not far from downtown, thought the settlement had paved the way for relatively peaceful coexistence between Atlanta’s whites and blacks. Anna—the daughter of Mordecai Johnson, the late president of Howard University—feared that Atlanta was headed for a “separate but equal” solution.

  On the final day of the conference, Joan and Anna took a guided bus tour through the city. Late in the afternoon, they rode past Southview Cemetery, where Martin Luther King had been laid to rest after his assassination. As the bus glided beneath a canopy of giant oaks, Joan made out the eternal flame by King’s headstone. Suddenly her throat throbbed with the loss of so many dreams buried there in the red Georgia clay.

  All through that spring and early summer, Colin felt some of the same remorse. Walking to and from his office at the Boston University Law School, he passed Marsh Chapel, where he and Joan had been married, where their friend Howard Thurman had presided as chaplain, where Martin Luther King had worshipped as a divinity student. In front of the chapel the university had erected a monument to King, a cluster of cast-iron shapes, turned reddish brown by rust, which resembled a flight of birds soaring skyward. On three sides were chiseled passages from his writings. It was a provocative reminder of the man and the event which had brought Colin into Boston nearly a decade before. Passing the monument twice a day, he recalled that time when moral imperatives had seemed so clear and compelling and he caught himself yearning for that old certitude, for that sense of high purpose which had swept him through the late
sixties and early seventies.

  All that spring and early summer, the South End house stayed on the market, with no buyer willing to pay the asking price. But the Divers decided to move into the Newton house on August 1 so that the boys could get acclimated before school began and Colin and Joan would have a midsummer respite in which to recover from the emotional cyclone of the spring, a time in which to consider where they had come from and where they were going.

  Since the baseball bat incident, some of his critics in the South End had dismissed Colin as a hypocrite whose liberal convictions had melted away as soon as they confronted his self-interest. They were fond of quoting such dicta as “A conservative is a liberal who just got mugged” or “A conservative is a liberal whose kid just got bused.” Colin conceded that, of late, he was paying less attention to the needs of society and more to his own, his wife’s, and his children’s. Not long ago he would have apologized for that; now he saw no reason to. What was wrong with wanting to live in a community where he could walk the streets without fear, where he could leave his family at home without worrying about their safety, where he could send his children to public school with confidence that they were getting a sound education? What was wrong with demanding effective police protection, efficient courts, clean streets, well-maintained parks, good lighting, adequate garbage collection?

  Yet he liked to think that the changes in his social and political outlook were grounded in something more than narrow self-interest—namely, in his years of government service and his life in a troubled urban neighborhood. For if the central tenet of liberal faith was the efficacy of governmental intervention, Colin’s experience had made him something of an apostate. Eight years before, as he entered Kevin White’s administration, he had thought the city was very much like a poor person who suffered from dirt, disease, poverty, hunger, and crime. The first priority was to devise programs addressed to those human needs. One should hire a staff of bright, committed young people, turn them loose on such problems, and come up with fresh solutions. What happened to those ideas, how they were put into practice, hadn’t concerned Colin very deeply.