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A glimpse of Boston history behind the drywall in a Dorchester attic
By adamg on Sat, 09/01/2018 - 10:18pm
Jenn reports she got a glimpse of what appeared to be an old campaign sign behind some drywall in her attic, decided to take a look and then wondered what it was all about.
Back in the mid-1980s, some residents of Boston's predominantly black neighborhoods - Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan - decided to gauge support for carving out a new city, to be called Mandela in honor of the South African freedom fighter then still in prison (after he was freed in 1990, one of his first international visits was to Boston, where he spoke at Madison Park High School). Voters in the neighborhoods rejected the idea in non-binding referendum in 1986 and 1988.
The Bay State Banner last year looked back at the Mandela effort.
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Comments
One of the silliest proposals ever
I mean, it would be silly if it weren't just outright racist. Imagine if South Boston, Charlestown, and West Roxbury had done the same thing at the same time.
And don't get me wrong. The communities in question needed better services, but creating an area with many issues and a small tax base would not have solved matters either. Thankfully, in the end the voters have much more sense than the folk behind this measure and Boston remained whole.
I don't think silly is a fair term
It was more of a publicity stunt than anything, and the neighborhoods you mention were the neighborhoods that got decent services, rather than sewage flooding, nightly arson festivals from absentee landlord insurance scams, and deterioration from lack of maintenance of everything.
Less racist, more highlighting that one solution to racism is independence. Self determination means not having to constantly beg only to get nothing.
Huh?
If independence means cutting yourself off from the tax base, how would you not end up begging for things?
Begging for things was the entire point.
The idea was that if they did this they would have no tax revenue and the Feds would Have to step in and pay for everything. Basically they wanted to make the Berry a Federal Disaster Area and become one big HUD compound. Hard to believe such a well thought out plan didn't pass.
Go back to Fox News
They thought having direct control over local matters would help spread the wealth being brought into the area with increasing gentrification. They saw -- correctly -- that wealthy areas of Boston were being better served and city government consisted almost entirely of people from these wealthy areas.
Gentrification?
Do you really think Dudley Square, Grove Hall, and Mattapan were facing gentrification in the 1980s? If anything, setting up the bantustan of Mandela would have signaled that the area was for only a certain race, perhaps keeping the little bit of the area that has gentrified from going through that.
"...one big HUD compound."
Actually, the reality was not too dis-similar.
There was a bunch of Federal grants for in-fill housing in the seventies and eighties. You had streets with two or more vacant lots side by side. The government targeted those lots, took them over and financed housing on them. Some worked out better than others, but it was more government money than private bank capital unless the banks were 'incentivized' to make the loans.
Shades of Boston 2024
HUD (Housing and Urban Development) also bought a lot of foreclosed properties and flipped those to new buyers. Often they would transfer properties that no one wanted to the Veterans Administration who in turn would direct them towards Vietnam Vets. This is all in keeping with the core mission on the Dept (pre- trump anyway). That's different from the idea of Mandella.
Uhubers who can still remember 3 years ago will recognize this as the same reasoning behind that was behind the failed Olympic bid. ("If we vote for this then the Feds will step in and rebuild they T and a bunch of other things. They'll Have To".) As someone else said here that's the equivalent of getting pregnant on purpose because then you figure the guy will marry you then. It's the exact same thing but without a juicy racial component that turns nay-sayers into Fox News voters automatically.
Not a perfect track record.
I remember some in-fill housing started on Blue just before Seaver St. It was brick/cement/whatever and sat there open for about twenty years.
Of course it never burned.
One on Columbus Ave. in Egleston Too, Right After the Tower
Sat there open for years, yes. it was replaced with a different subsidized development within the past 15 years.
Therein lies the problem.
Take an economically disadvantaged place with plenty of non-performing land (vacant) and cut it off from the revenue stream of the former municipality and you're asking for trouble.
Water pipe broke? Snow removal? All the little nuts-and-bolts things that comprise a (fairly) well run government are simply non-existent and must be built from scratch.
Well run government?
Boston in the 1980s? Did you live in Boston in the 1980s?
Oh hahahahahaha. Remember, Menino was an incredible breath of fresh air because things started to be fixed all over the city, not just in the wealthy areas.
If you lived in one of these neighborhoods in the 1980s, things NEVER got fixed because all the money went to the places where those in power lived. Hence the secession initiative - why pay taxes to a government that provides no services? That is "punishing" you for complaining about blatant school racism? Might as well call your own shots if it cannot get any worse.
YOU ARENT FROM
Boston nor do you live here. Shhhhhh!
Not so fast
She was probably a resident in the 80s.
Were you?
I was a resident in the 80s
Six years. The city government was a joke.
One reason Menino was so beloved was that broken things didn't just sit there and stay broken like they did when Flynn was chasing fire trucks or going on international junkets - he set up systems and stuff got fixed! Things like streetlights that sat out much of the Flynn years turned on!
You overstate Menino
He hired people who discovered what cities like Baltimore were doing and took credit for what they did.
Also, Flynn did a great job compared to White at the end. At least Flynn cared about the neighborhoods. Remember that all this happened 2 years into his administration.
Hey full time student...
...it's 1988. Stop pretending that you're paying attention to the City's business. Buy some Apple stock. Become a leftie millionette.
Ray Flynn bought six engines and four ladder trucks right after he won the election. That was in 1984. The Boston Fire Department still had 1947 Macks in service as spares. Maybe if you were living in the potential Mandela that would count.
People in Roxbury saw what he was doing. He was making the effort that the Kevin White administration didn't give a damn about making.
As far as your misguided focus on Menino, he wasn't mayor until 1993. Please, try to keep up.
Oh, the unnecessary use of the EXCLAMATION POINT!!! is unnecessary!
Just a style clue to try to make your comments less jarring! BUT THEY ARE VERY DRAMATIC!!
Sez the guy who ...
... posts pictures of unrelated/right wing meme/inflammatory shit and doesn't even get the whole [img=###x###] thang.
Yup 33 years
And 4th generation Bostonian! You?
Go back to the first comment here
My parents were married at St. Margaret’s the summer before White was elected. They raised us here and we still live here.
That was one clueless post.
I have the home team advantage here.
I have no idea what you were doing in the eighties, but I will advance the claim that I was here, in the middle of it, the whole damn time. I literally lived it.
I probably understand, better than you, what they were trying to do.
Here's what they were trying to do...they were trying to make a point. It was serious and not a publicity stunt.
So, line by line...
"Well run government?"
Ya. Here's what I wrote, ' All the little nuts-and-bolts things that comprise a (fairly) well run government are simply non-existent and must be built from scratch.'
Simple explanation...Mandela, as a city, is literally being built from scratch. Mistakes will be made.
"Boston in the 1980s? Did you live in Boston in the 1980s?"
Yup.
"Oh hahahahahaha. Remember, Menino was an incredible breath of fresh air because things started to be fixed all over the city, not just in the wealthy areas."
I have no idea how to answer that. It makes no sense. Perhaps you have your mayors mixed up. Ray Flynn was the mayor, because Kevin from Heaven dropped out after seeing his numbers among the elderly, his most potent voter block. Sixteen percent ain't pretty. After Ray Flynn was elected, he used his genuine good heart and soul to mend many bridges in the City. Didn't do the Long Island Bridge, but, hey...
"If you lived in one of these neighborhoods in the 1980s, things NEVER got fixed because all the money went to the places where those in power lived...Might as well call your own shots if it cannot get any worse."
The rich parts of the city got all the money while Dorchester/Roxbury/Mattapan etc starved? You don't know a thing about the distribution of resources in the eighties. I do. I drove those roads on a daily basis. I don't have to google a study.
Blue Hill Ave was rebuilt from Dudley to Mattapan.
Columbia Rd was rebuilt.
Columbus Ave, ditto.
Talbot Ave and hundreds of smaller streets were repaved as part of the BWSC rebuild of the basic pipe infrastructure.
All the land (meaning houses) taken for the Southwest Corridor? I remember large patches of land just left barren. He tried to address the issue as much as possible.
Why did the Mandela movement sputter out? It was not needed. The right person, at the right time, was at the helm and many influential people in Roxbury and Dorchester, and by that I mean businessmen and more importantly, clergy, had faith that Flynn was a good man.
That faith was not misplaced. He kept his promises, he was a man of his word. He has a lot of respect among the minority neighborhoods.
Today, right now, they think very highly of him.
Not silly, but not practical, either.
I, like several commenters here, lived through that issue. I'm glad to see the PDF AG cited get into the 'nuts and bolts' of the economics of the question.
Is it always about money? Absolutely. Always.
I learned quite a bit from that paper. First, that all page numbers are, as they say on the Coast Guard charts, "position approximate.' Second, it's fairly comprehensive.
(P13) “In 1981, Roxbury's Highland Park neighborhood was dubbed ‘The Arson Capital of the Nation.’" Most of the fires, the Arson Commission noted, "were directly related to increased speculation due to the Southwest Corridor Project,..."
Most of the arson was in vacant buildings. Not directly 'money in a landlord's pocket' because it's virtually impossible to insure a vacant building. Check your policy, especially if it's more than one unit. After thirty days, you are SOL without a declaration and a huge premium increase.
"...stated: "Many of the buildings that were burned were among the approximately 75 abandoned buildings that local residents attempted to save for low-income housing and community based activities. When frightened residents, ignored then by Mayor [Kevin] White, appealed" to the state for assistance, they "learned that Highland Park's fire statistics were the highest in the Commonwealth.’" (Medoff and Sklar, 1994, 31)"
Byron Rushing then goes on to describe community fear of the fires.
I've heard of redlining, but this was a new twist...
(P25) "...‘reverse redlining’ led to blockbusting by realtors and racial conflict as neighborhoods turned from 90% White to 90% Black in only four years.” Authors Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon, in their 1992 book The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions, wrote: "The Boston Banks Urban Renewal Group program was to housing what court-ordered desegregation was to education: while creating the impression of fairness, in reality it created more problems than it solved." (Levine and Harmon, 1992)"
So, in order to solve that problem, they outlawed blockbusting. Worked like a charm.
(P6) "The main criticism of the Mandela idea was an essential question asked by many—how would they "go it alone" economically?"
Everything has to start from scratch. Mandela City Hall, police, fire, parks, permit issuance...all from the ground up. In the meantime, do you pay to hire Boston fire and police until you develop your own? No permits, development hits a brick wall. Given the lead in time for even the simplest of projects like single family housing on individual lots, new tax base revenue is years away. Not a pretty sight.
(29) "Thinking and talking about having our own police force, having our own fire department, having our own money, having our own tax rates, having our own businesses, and reaping the profits of those businesses only for Roxbury became very, very dangerous to the other community. And when I say the other community I do mean the White community and those people—those Black people that supported that—that group of people. (King)"
They quoted some figures from the LA Times (P36):
"...Los Angeles Times article, "Separatist City of Mandela: Boston Voting on Proposal to Let Black Areas Secede," stated: A study commissioned by Mayor Flynn and released in early October showed that Mandela would face a $135-million deficit in its first year. The study said also that Mandela would have to raise residential property taxes by 61% and commercial and industrial property taxes by 44% to compensate for its reduced tax base. But Mandela supporters dismiss the study's figures as deliberately misleading. (Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1986)"
How would those tax increases be affected by Prop 2 1/2? Are they even legal? Do you use the City's own tax base figures to establish a 'basis' for the city of Mandela? If you do, then a 61% increase could be illegal, not to mention the destruction of the remaining tax base.
Not sure about misleading, but I've learned the hard way, when dealing with budget estimates is to take your worst case scenario and add about thirty percent to it. Then pray.
Calling this a stunt is revisionary history at its worst.
This was a very, very serious issue in Boston for years. Something that the then residents can testify to. If it was a stunt for attention someone should have told the supporters because they didn't think so. Looking back we can see how ridiculous the idea is, and I suppose "It was all farce and high theater" makes for a simple, palatable explanation.
Racist
The only racist thing about this is all the comments suggesting that the new Black-led city would be without any resources or tax base. What makes people think Black leaders wouldn't collect taxes and run municipal services just like pretty much every community in the world does? Of course this community would have these things.
A city founded with race as it's key element
Sounds racist to me.
If they at least wanted to be subtle about it, that would be one thing, but having Columbia Point as an exclave made it clear the criteria for inclusion.
As for resources, the rest of Boston has the central business district. I love the neighborhoods, but that is a great tax base the new city would not have access to.
Sigh, It would have been the same in most hoods in Boston.
The neighborhoods all get underwritten by commercial development and downtown real estate. It's not like the Charlestown or Southie (you've heard of them, right?) would have been any different if they tried to do the same. Boston was still a very sketchy place in the 80s, but some have a hard time imagining anything other than a Starbucks on every corner. When in doubt just tell everyone that they're racist, one size fits all.
What a fascinating find!
I had not realized Boston had a separation movement-- they were quite common in the southeast and in California.
"...in the southeast and in California."
...and Canada.
The French and English are still fighting their two hundred old European wars, I think.
Rene Levesque
aka Rene Levexit in modern terms. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/rene-levesque/
The secession movement failed, yes, but it did have the effect of preventing anglification from being forced on the province (and the bilingual unification caused children in Alberta to have to learn some French).
Deleted a comment
If you want to discuss the historical context of a Boston event 40 years ago, that's fine. But, sorry, I'm not going to let this site become a repository of thoroughly discredited 2018 extremist fever dreams.
Deleted a couple more comments
As an unrepentant lefty(ish) from back in the day, I appreciate the comment that explained in detail why I deleted the first comment - very accurate and well put. But at the risk of sounding like the author of the opening credits to "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," I deleted that, too, because that leads to other people posting comments in which they wonder what's wrong with spewing absolute garbage, which they then repeat, with no foundation in what some of us still quaintly call "the truth."
So, the management would be much obliged if we could just give this a rest.
Thanks!
That's cool bro
I'll add The Atlantic to the list of sources I'm not allowed to cite on Uhub without getting the banhammer.
Your site - your rules
Strong believer in ID’ing falsity whenever or wherever it occurs but that’s just me.
Understand your logic and certainly can live with it. Peace.
News to me
I never heard about this, even once, and I was living and voting here in '86 & '88. Fascinating.
Freedom Foods took off like a
Freedom Foods took off like a lead balloon too !
I had almost forgotten about Mandela
As someone who grew up in DOT and would have lived in Mandela I can tell you this was a serious issue at the time. The 80s were an extremely tenuous time in Boston. Notwithstanding the birth of Yuppies and the beginning of the revitalization of downtown, the neighborhoods that would have made up Mandela were in turmoil. The issues of red lining, bussing, b-burging and blockbusting were still raw (or ongoing). Arson was not as common as in the late 70s (when neighbors would put chairs on the roof of triple deckers to watch the fires at night) but it was present, and vacant land was growing weeds and abandoned cars (which th City literally did not have a right time tow until a change in the law!). This was all combined with an intellectually driven black power movement that was often heard on the streets through its pop anthems from groups like Public Enemy, which played the Strand Theatre in Uphams Corner when I was a kid. It was no easy place to live and Mandela was a seriously debated idea in the neighborhoods.
Not a Close Vote
According to the linked report, in the 1986, the vote was
That ended discussion of the issue.