Common Ground

by J. Anthony Lukas

  Four years with Kevin White and two with Frank Sargent had taught him that ideas alone were virtually useless, that government couldn’t define people’s needs for them, that “solutions” worked only if they were perceived as such by a substantial constituency and implemented by skilled managers. Moreover, unless such programs were shrewdly calculated, they were often ineffective, even counterproductive, producing consequences quite opposite from those the reformers had intended.

  By late 1976, Colin was dividing his time equally between Boston University’s Law School and its School of Public Management. The study of law dealt with rights, management with procedures; law with what should be, management with what worked. These two approaches to the world were naturally in tension. Shuttling between them, Colin increasingly saw himself as an intermediary, giving managers a better appreciation of constitutional rights, showing lawyers how to implement such norms.

  He was particularly concerned with the growing role of judges in managing public institutions. For governmental intervention was especially hazardous when it came not from politicians, who were responsible to a popular constituency, but from judges guided only by their reading of the United States Constitution, centuries of common law, and judicial precedent. Eight years before, just completing his stint as the Harvard Law Review’s Supreme Court Note Editor, Colin had been especially sensitive to constitutional imperatives, looking to the judiciary for affirmation of rights flouted by callous legislators and arrogant executives. Not surprisingly then, he had welcomed Arthur Garrity’s decision in the Boston schools case. But gradually he came to wonder whether Garrity’s remedy—massive cross-city busing—was appropriate to the violation he had found, and whether this example of judicial activism hadn’t finally set back the very cause it was designed to advance.

  Unlike legislators directly accountable to the electorate, and executives with substantial resources at their disposal, judges depended heavily on society’s respect for their adjudicatory role. They could prevail only with the cooperation of other governmental bodies and, ultimately, with assent from the people themselves. But Garrity’s sweeping remedy so affronted the conventions of white Boston that he never got that cooperation. Instead, thousands of whites found an effective means of subverting his order.

  In September 1972, the year Garrity first heard testimony on the NAACP suit, some 90,000 students were enrolled in Boston’s public schools, roughly 54,000—or 60 percent—white. By 1974, when the judge issued his long-anticipated order, the system’s total enrollment had slipped to 82,000, about 55 percent white. By 1976, only 71,000 students were left in the system, barely 44 percent of them white. In just four years Boston’s schools had lost nearly 20,000 white students—to parochial schools, private academies, the streets, or because their families had left the city altogether.

  This precipitous decline had set off a vigorous debate in legal and academic circles. Some critics saw it as indisputable evidence that massive numbers of white families had pulled their children out of the public schools to protest Garrity’s order. Others were less certain. They noted that white enrollment had been eroding for more than a decade before Garrity even received the case, in part because of the declining white birth rate, in part as a result of the long-term migration of middle-income families from city to suburb. Even those, like the Divers, who left the city during the initial busing years were often reacting to many conditions simultaneously—as much to crime, dirt, noise, and the unresponsive bureaucracy as to the disruptive effects of the busing order.

  But whatever share of the white exodus could be directly attributed to Garrity’s rulings, there could be little doubt that the goal of effective school desegregation had been substantially undercut by the steady drain of white students. By the end of 1976, blacks, Hispanics, and other “minorities” were already a majority of the school population, and before long blacks themselves became a majority. With that “tipping point” passed, most authorities agreed, the system would grow increasingly black year by year. More important, with middle-income parents of all races pulling their children out of the system, the remaining students increasingly came from the lowest economic and social strata of the city’s population. More and more, Boston’s busing program consisted of mixing the black poor with the white poor, the deprived with the deprived.

  What might have been done—or still could be done—to prevent this deplorable outcome was a thornier issue. From a purely juridical standpoint, Garrity had probably been correct in declining to consider warnings of white opposition to his order; the Supreme Court had held that judges could not permit a “heckler’s veto” by tailoring their findings to fear of white violence or flight from the schools. On the other hand, many critics contended, it made no sense to launch a profound upheaval in a city’s social and racial fabric in order to produce a result diametrically opposite that which was intended. Surely, they argued, there must be some way, while preserving the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights, to prevent Boston’s schools from becoming the preserve of the black and the poor.

  Colin was particularly troubled by the class dimensions of this situation. Years before, in the wake of King’s assassination, he and Joan had addressed their professional careers and personal lives to the racial crisis, in particular to the Kerner Commission’s solemn warning that we were becoming two societies, one white and one black. As the decade wore on, Colin came to perceive the “American dilemma” less in purely racial and legal terms, more in class and economic terms. Wherever he looked he saw legal remedies undercut by social and economic realities. Eventually, he believed, the fundamental solution to the problems of a city like Boston lay in economic development. Only by providing jobs and other economic opportunities for the deprived—black and white alike—could the city reduce the deep sense of grievance harbored by both communities, alleviate some of the antisocial behavior grounded in such resentments, and begin to close the terrible gap between the rich and the poor, the suburb and the city, the hopeful and the hopeless.

  Yet here, Colin was painfully aware, his social analysis collided head on with his self-interest. Though he was convinced that Boston’s inner city could thrive only if it held on to its white middle class, he simply couldn’t live there any longer. Professionally, the Divers remained committed to Boston—Joan through her work at the Hyams Trust, Colin through teaching and consulting at the university. But their personal lives turned inward, focusing on friends, family, and home.

  Colin had always drawn special pleasure from shaping the space in which they lived. In the South End, some of his sweetest hours had been spent on a scaffold following the whorls and scallops of the ceiling plaster. Now, in that first summer of self-imposed exile from the city, he found solace in beginning work on their new home.

  The sprawling white clapboard house with its green shutters and slate roof was an architectural hybrid: it had been built in the Greek Revival style of the mid-nineteenth century, with its ornamental pilasters and triangular pediments, but half a century later, during the Colonial Revival, it had been remodeled with an open porch at one end, a new doorway at the other. Lately the house had fallen into disrepair. First, Colin redid the kitchen, tearing down a cheap plasterboard ceiling and restoring the original scale of the room. Then he converted a fifth bedroom into a combination bath and laundry, opening a door through a walk-in closet into the master bedroom. He removed another bathroom which blocked light from an arched Palladian window in front. He rewired, laid new tile, replastered, and repainted throughout.

  The most distinctively Colonial feature of the house was a white picket fence which flanked it on both sides. Constructed at the turn of the century, the fence was built in the seventeenth-century style without a single nail, its balusters and rails fitted together with mortise and tenon, a square peg in a square hole; but with years of neglect, it had sagged and buckled for yards at a stretch. Colin set out to rebuild it. All that winter in his basement workshop he cut hundreds of new balusters, I3/8 i
nches square, topped by an ornamental molding. Then he ripped dozens of new rails, three inches high and nine feet long. With saw and file he cut the mortises, keeping them 1/32 of an inch smaller than the tenons to guarantee a snug joint. When spring came, he spent evenings and weekends fitting the pieces together, then laying on three coats of white paint. In early June the job was done, the intricate junction of peg and hole sealing off the Divers’ perimeter, rearing its ivory spine against the world.

  Epilogue

  Colin Diver still teaches law and public management at Boston University, where he was promoted to full professor in 1981. In 1983, he was named chairman of the State Ethics Commission, which combats corruption and conflict of interest in state and local government.

  Joan Diver remains executive director of the Hyams Trust. In 1982, she was named chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Mutual Bank Foundation and in 1984 of the Horace Cousens Industrial Fund, which helps needy individuals in the city of Newton.

  Brad and Ned Diver attend Newton North High School, from which they will be graduated in 1985 and 1987, respectively. Brad is an accomplished jazz guitarist, while Ned plays the trombone in several ensembles.

  Arthur and Heather Makechnie returned to Boston in 1979. Abandoning his Ph.D. thesis, Arthur became director of food services at the Cambridge School of Weston. He and Heather devote much of their time to assisting Vietnamese refugees. They have taken four Vietnamese children into their home and have sponsored an annual Thanksgiving dinner for refugees.

  George Makechnie, Dean Emeritus of Sargent College, is a consultant for development planning to the dean of that college. Working to increase public appreciation of the life and thought of the late Howard Thurman, he is a trustee of the Howard Thurman Educational Trust, and a liaison between the Trust and Boston University.

  Anne Makechnie died on September 12, 1980, after a nine-month battle with cancer. Until her illness, she had remained one of the most active real estate brokers in Lexington.

  Ethleen Diver still maintains a small law practice in Lexington. She celebrated her eighty-first birthday in 1984.

  Benjamin Diver died on March 12, 1981, of cancer at the age of eighty-six. To the end he maintained a love of classical music and all things British.

  Rachel Twymon has been a medical assistant in the trauma area of the MIT Medical Department since January 1979. She continues to live at Methunion Manor.

  Cassandra Twymon lives in Atlanta. She is enrolled at the Bryman School, studying to be a medical assistant.

  Rachel Twymon (daughter) lives with her three-year-old son, Michael, in a South End apartment.

  Richard Walker (Twymon) works as a cook at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee. He was married in 1983 and has a one-year-old daughter.

  Wayne Twymon, after training as a cadet in the Boston Police Department, became a cook at an MIT dormitory. He was married in 1984.

  George Walker (Twymon) graduated from Tennessee State in 1981. He is now at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, studying to become a minister of the United Methodist Church.

  Frederick Twymon, after serving five years at Concord Reformatory, was transferred to a Boston pre-release center and works during the week at Charlie’s Eating and Drinking Saloon.

  Helen Walker lives in a housing-for-the-elderly project on Tremont Street. She is eighty years old.

  Hasan Sharif (Arnold Walker) has been an administrative supervisor in the State Department of Social Services since June 1980. He also teaches in the faculty of continuing education at Roxbury Community College.

  Tommy Walker was released from Walpole Prison in 1979 and has resumed construction work in Boston.

  Alva Debnam is a computer operator for Stone and Webster Engineering Co. and takes night courses at Northeastern University. She has left her embattled house on Centre Street, settling ten blocks north in a primarily black neighborhood.

  Alice McGoff is still with the New England Telephone Company, working in the corporate services department. She and her three youngest children live together in Charlestown.

  Lisa McGoff married John Collins on September 26, 1981. John works as a maintenance man at the Boston Garden. Lisa is in the billing department of H. P. Hood, a milk company in Charlestown.

  Danny McGoff is employment officer at the John F. Kennedy Human Service Center in Charlestown and coaches basketball at Christopher Columbus High School in the North End.

  Billy McGoff is an electrician. He was married in October 1984 to Taryn Muise.

  Kevin McGoff works as a stagehand at the Boston Garden and as a disk jockey at Shaun’s, a Quincy Market discotheque.

  Tommy McGoff is completing a tour as a chef in the United States Coast Guard.

  Robin McGoff is a hairdresser at Sheer Delight, a Charlestown beauty salon.

  Bobby McGoff is in his junior year in the liberal arts program at Boston University.

  Louise Day Hicks was narrowly defeated for the City Council in November 1979. Suffering from a serious eye condition, she temporarily retired to private life, but a year later Kevin White appointed her to the Boston Retirement Board, which supervises the city’s pension system. When she left the board in 1982, the Mayor found her yet another job: a part-time position with the city’s Public Facilities Department, at fifty-five dollars an hour.

  W. Arthur Garrity is still on Boston’s Federal District bench, where he retains ultimate authority in the Boston schools case. But in December 1982, as part of a progressive “disengagement” from the case, he gave the State Board of Education primary responsibility for monitoring compliance with his rulings.

  Humberto Cardinal Medeiros died on September 17, 1983, after surgery to repair a badly damaged heart. Six months later, he was replaced by Bernard F. Law, a Harvard-educated priest of Irish-German descent, known for his efforts to facilitate desegregation in Mississippi during the sixties.

  Thomas Winship retired as editor of the Globe on January 1, 1985, and became the first Senior Fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University. He was replaced by Michael Janeway, a former managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly who joined the Globe in 1978.

  Kevin White, under federal investigation for campaign finance irregularities, announced on May 26, 1983, that he would not seek a fifth term as mayor. Taking a teaching and consulting job at Boston University, he was succeeded at City Hall by former City Councilman Raymond L. Flynn, described in his campaign literature as an “urban populist.”

  The Bancroft School has been converted to luxury condominiums.

  Acknowledgments

  In the course of seven years on this project, I have received more than my ration of assistance, support, advice, and encouragement.

  My work was underwritten, in part, by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which awarded me a fellowship in 1978–79; the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, where I was a fellow in 1976–77; the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where I was an adjunct lecturer in 1979–80; and the School of Public Communications at Boston University, where I was an adjunct professor in 1977–78. I am grateful for their help.

  For research assistance, I thank Richard Doherty, Karen Falkenstein, Kevin Murphy, Elaine Makovska, Chris Landry, Toby Wertheim, Alice Richmond, Richard Henderson, and Drina Archer.

  I am grateful to the staffs of the Boston Globe’s library (particularly David Beveridge), the Boston Herald’s library (particularly John Cronin), the Widener Library of Harvard University, and the John F. Kennedy Library.

  In 1977–78, I served in the Study Group on Urban School Desegregation sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. I learned much from its participants and am especially grateful to Diane Ravitch for her insights into the complex relationship between community and equality.

  I thank my editors at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.—Robert Gottlieb and Charles Elliott—for the critical intelligence, infinite care, and consummate professionalism they have lavished on this book.


  I thank my wife, Linda Healey, for her many shrewd judgments and her tenacity in defending them against my prickly pride of authorship.

  Anyone who has read the preceding pages will recognize the enormous debt I owe to the Divers, the Twymons, and the McGoffs. Each of these families has spent hundreds of hours with me—in formal, tape-recorded interviews, in casual talk over a meal or drink, in countless phone calls to fill holes or check facts. They have opened their homes to me; suffered me to read their correspondence and pore through confidential records; introduced me to their friends, neighbors, and professional colleagues. They have, in sum, opened their lives to me with a candor and magnanimity for which I am deeply grateful.

  Among the hundreds of others who have helped me on this book, there is one I must single out for special thanks: Thomas N. Brown, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Wise scholar, matchless teacher, gracious and gentle man, Tom has provoked me with subtle and Socratic dialogue to a deeper understanding of his city.

  In the lists that follow—one for each group of family chapters and one for all others—I have tried to thank everyone by name. If I have omitted anyone, I beg his or her indulgence.

  DIVER

  Mary Rose Allen, Michael Ambrosino, Sheldon Appel, Ferdinand and Diane Arenella, Norman Asher, Tom Atkins, Ellen Baker, Dorothy Berman, Joel Bernard, Dick Bluestein, Jane Bowers, Phil Bradley, Marnell Bubar, Ken and Sue Campbell, Richard Card, John Coakley, Frazier Cocks, Frank Coleman, Leonard Colwell, Patricia Corcoran, Bill Cowin, Albie Davis, Ben Diver, Brad Diver, Colin Diver, Ethleen Diver, Joan Diver, Ned Diver, Peter and Anne Dodson, Gordon and Jane Doerfer, Anthony Douin, Adrian du Cille, Billy Dwyer, Rev. William Dwyer, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ellms, Leonard Fein, Ruth Fein, Carol Feldman, Kathy Fitzpatrick, Bob Foster, Barney Frank, Marion Fremont-Smith, Henry J. Friendly, Tom Gaffney, Lola Garland, Paul Garrity, Alan Gartner, Fred Glimp, Mark Goldweitz, Martin Gopen, Richie Hall, Chris and Clare Hayes, Gary Hayes, Herb and Anne Hershfang, Ralph and Molly Hoagland, Cyril Joly, Anna Jones, Nathan Kaganoff, Stanley Katz, Gordon Kershaw, Mel and Joyce King, James Leamon, Priscilla Lee, P. A. Lenk, Michael Lerner, Theodore Levitt, Lance Liebman, Linda MacGregor, Rev. Thomas MacLeod, Anne Makechnie, Arthur Makechnie, George Makechnie, Heather Makechnie, Norman Makechnie, David Mann, Daniel Mayers, Priscilla McKapplip, Edwin McKechnie, Horace McKechnie, Sam Merrick, Sally Merry, Nina Meyer, Mary Morrison, Michael and Arline Morrison, Theresa Morse, Charles Mulcahy, Nicky Nickerson, Andy Olins, Paul Oosterhuis, David Parker, James Parker, Sandra Perkins, Dain Perry, Barbara and Henry Petschek, Lillian Radio, Dorothy Reichard, Frank Rich, Royden Richardson, Ed Richmond, Larry Robbins, Bill Roeder, Homer Russell, Timothy Saasta, Joan Saklad, Fred Salvucci, Muriel Sanford, Dan and Mary Shannon, Frank Sheehan, Pat and Ed Shillingburg, Gracelaw Simmons, Danny D. Smith, David Horton Smith, Mason Smith, Peggy Smith, Jeff Steingarten, Rabbi Malcolm Stern, William N. Swift, Alan Taylor, Janet Taylor, George and Susan Thomas, Howard Thurman, Iris Tolbert, Mike and Linda Trum, Jack T. Turner, Bob Underhill, Lois Varney, James Vickery, Judy Watkins, Bob Weinberg, Jack White, Bettina Willey, John Wolbarst, Steve Wolfberg, Paul and Judy Wright, Josh and Holly Young.