UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009 - (Page 12)

Acknowledging History, Renewing a Commonwealth A NEW iNiTiATiVE WoRkS To MAkE MASSAChUSETTS WELCoMiNG To ALL. By JUlia reiSCHel “T he legacy of busing stains our brand as a community which does not embrace people of color.” This was the hard truth spoken by Stephen P. Crosby, the dean of the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, to a packed ballroom of Boston’s business leaders in May. It was not always this way, he continued, as a slideshow behind him flashed images of minority and female luminaries from Boston’s past. More than a third of Boston’s greatest innovations from the past 400 years were thought up by minorities and women, he said. Here, a freed slave introduced the smallpox inoculation to the New World, a woman designed America’s first thoughtfully planned water supply system, and Harvard’s first black professor invented the first screening test for syphilis. By the end of the nineteenth century, Crosby said, Boston had a “powerful brand” as a desirable place for African Americans. It was a place that W.E.B. Dubois once called “the Negro’s Mecca,” a hothouse of diversity and tolerance that fueled the city’s economic and social prosperity. And then came changes in the economy, growth in the suburbs—and busing. The iconic photograph of black man being attacked with the point of a flagpole during a protest against busing destroyed 300 years of inclusion and tolerance, Crosby concluded. It “indelibly branded Boston as a racist city.” Crosby’s chilling speech publicly launched a vigorous effort, based at UMass Boston, to return Boston to its historic role as a city of diversity. A new initiative called Commonwealth Compact, led by former Boston Globe editor Robert Turner, Globe publisher Steve Ainsley, former chairman of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Ralph Martin, and Crosby, is uniting Boston leaders behind the goal of reclaiming that lost brand. Commonwealth Compact, now an organization with a small staff operating out of the McCormack school, grew out of conversations between Crosby and Turner two years ago, when Crosby first became the school’s dean. Both men had been brooding over the problem of diversity in Massachusetts. Under Crosby’s stewardship, McCormack researchers conducted Commonwealth Compact’s first projects, a statewide survey of minorities and another survey of local boards of directors. The polls showed that many people still experienced discrimination firsthand, and that 95% of board members in Boston were white men. A NEED To RECoGNiZE AND AffiRM “In Boston, there is a sense of this being an unwelcoming place, a sense of people not being recognized and affirmed,” is how Colleen Richards Powell, Commonwealth Compact’s deputy director, explains the findings. “This is the only place I’ve gone to where I can be sitting in a room full of 1,200 business people and I can count the number of people of color on one hand. We really have almost absent-mindedness about it. I think that the people don’t even realize the people are missing. But people of color definitely notice.” Armed with information, Crosby and Turner began to act. “We wanted to do something,” Turner says. “We talked about getting a really good group of advisors together.” They pooled their lists of contacts, which included Ainsley and Martin, and began meeting with a large group of Boston business and community leaders to share ideas about what could be done to return Boston to its tolerant past. 12 n UMass Boston

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009

UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009 Contents UNews Oh, the Places They've Gone! "One of Those Rare Leaders" Acknowledging History, Renewing a Commonwealth Heart and Mind Indelible Images About Alumni Investing in UMass Boston A Generous Friend Alumni Calendar

UMass Boston Alumni Magazine - Fall/Winter 2008-2009

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