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Re: Gotta Luv That Nixon
JD,
I grew up in the North Dorchester -Dorchester-Mattapan area.
Earliest neighborhoods ages 4-9 were mixed Jewish and Irish Catholic. Best friends were of both derivations. The McNally kids used to walk out of our house eating matzoh with sweet butter at Passover. Eddie McNally told (Jewish) Marty Epstein that he killed Christ and Marty (just a kid himself) said that he didn't even know him.
Later we moved to an all Irish Catholic neighborhood up the street and from there to a North Dorchester house in a mixed neighborhood that was rapidly turning into an all black neighborhood as blacks moved steadily south from Roxbury towards Mattapan and block busting was rife.
From there to a very mixed neighborhood by Franklin Field -Dorchester where Jewish, Irish, black, Italians all lived and played together very nicely. That was 1957.
I attended a junior high school where there were just two black students: a very pretty and very intelligent girl named Valerie and a fat funny boy named Bill Dorsey . The girl was elected class president and Bill Dorsey, the boy, and I became friends and often went fishing together. The school was mostly Irish.
So, as I remember it, the racial situation wasn't too bad in Boston in those early years.
But later I came to see the racism in the high school years and after when the civil rights movement started up and the bigots in Southie came out in force to stop the busing to integrate their all-white schools.
Segregation is still the order of the day but racial tinged economics is really what drives it.
There is a saying; "Down south, the whites don't care how close the blacks get as long as they don't get too big (rich/powerful). Up north the whites don't care how big the blacks get as long as they don't get too close."
That is gradually changing in Boston and better off blacks, Hispanics, gays can and do find homes in what had been all-white enclaves but disproportionate poverty will always keep the poorer people in the poorer neighborhoods and blacks are disproportionately poorer countrywide.
JD,
I grew up in the North Dorchester -Dorchester-Mattapan area.
Earliest neighborhoods ages 4-9 were mixed Jewish and Irish Catholic. Best friends were of both derivations. The McNally kids used to walk out of our house eating matzoh with sweet butter at Passover. Eddie McNally told (Jewish) Marty Epstein that he killed Christ and Marty (just a kid himself) said that he didn't even know him.
Later we moved to an all Irish Catholic neighborhood up the street and from there to a North Dorchester house in a mixed neighborhood that was rapidly turning into an all black neighborhood as blacks moved steadily south from Roxbury towards Mattapan and block busting was rife.
From there to a very mixed neighborhood by Franklin Field -Dorchester where Jewish, Irish, black, Italians all lived and played together very nicely. That was 1957.
I attended a junior high school where there were just two black students: a very pretty and very intelligent girl named Valerie and a fat funny boy named Bill Dorsey . The girl was elected class president and Bill Dorsey, the boy, and I became friends and often went fishing together. The school was mostly Irish.
So, as I remember it, the racial situation wasn't too bad in Boston in those early years.
But later I came to see the racism in the high school years and after when the civil rights movement started up and the bigots in Southie came out in force to stop the busing to integrate their all-white schools.
Segregation is still the order of the day but racial tinged economics is really what drives it.
There is a saying; "Down south, the whites don't care how close the blacks get as long as they don't get too big (rich/powerful). Up north the whites don't care how big the blacks get as long as they don't get too close."
That is gradually changing in Boston and better off blacks, Hispanics, gays can and do find homes in what had been all-white enclaves but disproportionate poverty will always keep the poorer people in the poorer neighborhoods and blacks are disproportionately poorer countrywide.
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