civil rights

On April 5, 1976, Theodore “Ted” Landsmark, a Black, New York-born lawyer living in Boston, was rushing to a meeting with a development agency to discuss how to create opportunities for minority construction workers. When the 29-year-old reached City Hall Plaza, he crossed paths with a rowdy group of antibusing demonstrators.

As we continue to honor our heritage during Black History Month, we should use these brief four weeks to remember the historical impact of famous Black Americans from Boston.

As we look back at this year’s celebration of Labor Day, we must not forget the significant role that our community has played in the fight for labor rights. This holiday serves as a reminder of the long and ongoing struggle for labor rights and civil rights.

As we welcome the NAACP national convention to our city, I am joyful because America’s oldest civil rights group has chosen to come back to Boston and gather in one of the country’s oldest civil rights cities.

Fifteen years ago this month, renowned civil rights attorney Thomas Irving Atkins lost a 15-year battle to Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He had spent his entire life relentlessly fighting for racial equality and against racial discrimination, expanding his crusade beyond Boston as special counsel and general counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in its New York national office.

As a 12-year-old boy, Eric Holder watched on a small black-and-white television in the basement home of his Barbadian parents in the Queens section of New York City as John F. Kennedy spoke to the nation.

A group of 16 organizers from around the country came to Boston last week to begin a 20-week training session to advance political, civil, and human rights in their communities.

Black history is filled with the names of people who fought against oppression in pursuit of progress.

The staunch resistance of Blacks to despotism is assuring, but there is still some trepidation that change could come. Who would have anticipated that white radicals would invade the nation’s Capitol building to disrupt the U.S. Congress performing its constitutional duty to certify the results of a presidential election?

President Joe Biden gave his first address to a joint session of Congress on April 28, promising billions of dollars for infrastructure improvements and education support as well as immigration and civil rights reforms. The president’s proposed initiatives received mixed reactions from community leaders in Massachusetts, who are counting on federal aid to fund projects that are essential to COVID-19 recovery.

With white and Asian students over-represented in the city’s three selective-admissions schools, the one-year change was widely seen as a way to broaden the racial and socio-economic diversity in the schools.