Nezzie Taylor (left) and Antonio Dewolf (with baseball cap) pause for a moment by a memorial for Mayor Thomas Menino at Downtown Crossing.
Red-hot Roxbury real estate, neighborhood innovation districts, and racial disparities in education and criminal justice dominated the Banner’s headlines in 2014. It was a year of profound changes, with new faces on the 5th floor in City Hall and statewide elections that saw a high level of campaign activity in Boston’s black community. Throughout the year, there was frank discussion of race and racism, ranging from the 40th anniversary of court-ordered desegregation to allegations of police profiling and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Political changes
The 20-year reign of former Mayor Thomas Menino came to an end as the new year dawned. A definitive end to the Menino era came in October, with his death after a fight with cancer. Much of the city shut down for the funeral procession, which led from Faneuil Hall, past City Hall, through Dudley Square, Grove Hall, Bowdoin Street, Mattapan Square and Hyde Park.
The procession highlighted Menino’s focus on investing in the city’s neighborhood business districts, long neglected by the downtown business establishment.
Nearly overshadowed by his predecessor’s exit, newly-elected Mayor Martin Walsh pledged to continue and deepen investment in the city’s neighborhoods with a promise to create new innovation districts. The first such district is taking shape in Dudley Square, with the new Roxbury Innovation Center, sited in the soon-to-open Bruce Bolling Municipal Building.
Walsh earned plaudits from blacks early on with changes in the police brass that elevated people of color to half of the department’s leadership positions — a first in department history.
Striking Boston fast food workers and supporters block traffic in front of the Old State House in the intersection of Congress and State streets as part of the Fight for $15 campaign.
As the 2014 political season heated up over the summer months, Boston’s black community became a key battleground between the Democratic and Republican candidates for constitutional offices, with gubernatorial candidates Charlie Baker and Martha Coakley making frequent appearances. Baker won plaudits from political observers for campaigning in Roxbury and opening an office in Dorchester in what was widely seen as a part of a largely successful strategy to win over Democratic voters.
While Baker secured just 6 percent of the vote in the wards at the heart of the city’s black community, across the state swing voters gave Baker enough of a boost to nudge him nearly two percentage points ahead of Coakley in the Nov. 6 election.
Housing, development
New development projects that took shape in 2014 promise to change the face of Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan — the communities where most blacks, Latinos and Asians live in Boston. But with rents rising far faster than Bostonians’ wages, many fear a wave of gentrification could displace long-term Hub residents as well-heeled newcomers discover the city’s neighborhoods.
Black public safety officials gathered at Darryl’s Corner Bar and Kitchen (l-r): Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins, Police Superintendent-In-Chief William Gross, Mayor Martin Walsh, Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts President and CEO Darnell Williams, Deputy Fire Chief Andre Stallworth, Darryl’s Corner Bar Manager Mitch Mitchell, NAACP Boston Branch President Michael Curry and restaurateur Darryl Settles.
Nowhere is the transformation more abrupt than in Roxbury, where the new Bruce Bolling Municipal Building — set to open in just weeks — promises to bring in more than 600 workers and transform thousands of square feet of long-vacant storefronts.
This summer saw prices in Roxbury’s long-undervalued real estate market rapidly ramp up, with single-family homes selling for more than $500,000 and multi-families selling for more than $700,000.
New train stops in Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan on the Fairmount Commuter Rail line, and the MBTA’s promise to convert it into a rapid transit line with new train cars and weekend service, have similarly sparked interest in commercial and residential properties along the Fairmount corridor.
The whitening complexion of homebuyers in Roxbury and the increased activity of speculators throughout the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods have many in the city concerned that a new wave of gentrification could displace many of the city’s long-time residents. A January study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland concluded that Boston is the most rapidly-gentrifying city in the U.S.
The specter of more bearded hipsters bicycling through Boston’s neighborhoods loomed as community activists packed into Hibernian Hall in June for a forum on gentrification, hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists, which held its annual convention here this year.
Walsh gave affordable housing advocates a ray of hope with the Oct. release of his housing plan, calling for the construction of 53,000 new housing units by 2030, and calling on colleges and universities to build 16,000 new units to house their students.
Race matters
Like most major U.S. cities, Boston has seen its share of Black Lives Matter protest marches, which began in reaction to a series of police shootings of unarmed black suspects and the seeming unwillingness of the nation’s criminal justice system to hold police accountable for black deaths. The protests have become a weekly occurrence in Boston. Last week there was a student walk-out and a protest by attorneys and court workers.
Hundreds turned out to A Celebration of Summer: The Donna Summer Memorial Roller Disco Tribute Party on City Hall Plaza in Boston.
Inequality was a theme that surfaced often in 2014, with studies substantiating disparate treatment of people of color in the Massachusetts criminal justice system, in school discipline cases and in Greater Boston municipal leadership.
An analysis of police data, released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, established that blacks are more likely to be stopped, searched or questioned. For most blacks, that conclusion was not surprising. While Boston police disputed the significance of the findings, noting that a disproportionate share of the city’s crime occurs in black communities, civil rights advocates pointed out that the stops were just stops, not arrests. And in the overwhelming majority of those stops, the reason given by police, “investigate a person,” doesn’t in itself denote genuinely suspicious behavior.
Outside of the criminal justice system, black children face disparate treatment in school discipline, with blacks more than three times as likely as whites to face suspensions in Massachusetts schools, according to a review of Department of Elementary and Secondary Education data analyzed by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice. One in eight black students and one in ten Latino students are suspended in Massachusetts. While Boston’s suspension rate of 6.2 percent was lower than the national rate of 6.8 percent, charter schools in the city suspend a jaw-dropping 17 percent of their students.
While people of color make up a majority of the city’s population, whites still dominate high-paying positions in city government, with 88 percent of the 250 top-paying jobs, according to an analysis of city payroll records by Councilor Charles Yancey. Just 7 percent of those top-paying jobs were held by African Americans, 4 percent by Latinos and 2 percent by Asians.
Another report stated that Latinos are under-represented in city government. Despite making up 17 percent of the city’s population, Latinos hold just 7 percent of the top jobs and positions on city boards and commissions, according to a study commissioned by The Greater Boston Latino Network.
Boston activists staged a die-in on Congress Street as part of a demonstration following a New York grand jury’s refusal to indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.
The city’s discussion of race reached back a few decades with forums and public reflection on the 40th anniversary of court-ordered school desegregation in Boston. While whites and blacks still view the events through different lenses — as evidenced by the fact that many whites still refer to desegregation as “forced busing.” But this year’s observance included frank discussions between whites and blacks, ranging from community conversations held by the Union of Minority Neighborhoods to a public discussion in Boston’s City Council chamber.
2015
As 2015 dawns, blacks in Boston face a crossroads of challenges and opportunities. Fifty percent of Mayor Walsh’s cabinet positions are occupied by people of color. Roxbury’s home values are poised to climb even higher, as housing prices in the Greater Boston market continue to rise. And public officials are discussing race and racism openly, rolling up their sleeves to tackle thorny issues of inequality with initiatives like Mayor Walsh’s local My Brother’s Keeper effort.
If Boston’s black community remains as engaged in the city’s civic life as they were in 2014, there’s little doubt more constructive changes will come in 2015.
