Leader says Hub moving past its checkered racial history
As the National Urban League Conference arrives in Boston today for the first time in 35 years, Boston is a much different place than it was when anti-busing violence drew national scorn, said Darnell Williams, president and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.
“I don’t believe the Boston of the 1970s is the same Boston that I live in, work in and that I love,” Williams said.
The convention, being held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, will focus on finding solutions to unemployment in Boston’s urban neighborhoods.
Williams said the convention stayed away from the Hub because of the city’s tarnished racial reputation. He cited three incidents that defined Boston racially: the 1976 Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Ted Landsmark being attacked by a white man with an American flag by City Hall; wife-murderer Charles Stuart’s fabricated story of being attacked by a black man; and the more recent case of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates’ arrest on his porch by Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, an incident that led to the famous “Beer Summit” at the White House between Gates, President Obama and Crowley, CPD’s racial-profiling instructor. Today, Williams noted, Bay State voters have twice elected a black governor, and the city has its first black councilor-at-large.
Gov. Deval Patrick is due to welcome conventioneers this morning with an address titled “The State of Black Boston.”
In Dudley Square yesterday, black Bostonians cited frustration over joblessness and crime as major concerns. Kevin McLean, 38, of Dorchester, said, “I believe more jobs will help keep kids busy. If they’re working they are not going to be outside aggravated, stressed out and trying to hustle for drugs or trying to hurt other people.”
Shanele Everette, 33, a Codman Square mother of three, said if there were more jobs there would be less crime. “It’s like you got all these people with all this time on their hands and there’s nothing to do, so their best thing is to just rip and run and act crazy,” she said.
The Urban League’s Williams said that with minority unemployment in double digits and crime plaguing city neighborhoods, “We still have some work to do. If we can find ways to put people back to work, the issues of crime and unemployment will take care of themselves.”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1353941
