state funds from cities and towns with racially segregated schools. Receiving an honorary degree from Northeastern University, he told a throng at Boston Garden, “We in the Northeast say we have given opportunity to each wave of immigrants that has come to our shores, but if this is our tradition, why have we failed so far to offer similar opportunity to Negro citizens who have come from other states? It should be clear that a Negro child in Massachusetts has as much of a right to an integrated education as a Negro child in Mississippi or Alabama.”
Jerry Doherty, a Townie ally of Ted’s, warned that such positions would cost him heavily in Charlestown. And indeed they did, for Teddy had never been so much an object of Charlestown’s affections as the beneficiary of its special relationship with Jack. And if Jack’s advance to the White House had released the Boston Irish from their anxiety about being only half American, so it had made them secure enough to reject an Irishman as well. Ultimately, many blue-collar Irish unloaded on Ted the pent-up envy and resentment they’d never dared to direct at Jack.
By the spring of 1968, at age thirty-one, Alice McGoff was beginning to feel some of her father’s sense of grievance at the Kennedy clan. She was still a committed Democrat; she couldn’t imagine herself voting for a Republican. But she found herself wondering whether the Kennedys were genuine Democrats any longer, whether they really had the interests of the white working class at heart.
Hours after Martin Luther King’s death, Ted Kennedy delivered an impassioned eulogy to the fallen prophet. “He was a noble man, eloquent, patient, and brave,” the Senator told reporters. “He loved his fellow man, white and black. He died because he was willing to go throughout this country, as a leader and a symbol, in an effort to bring them together.”
Watching the Senator on television, Alice felt a rush of anger at his smug, preachy tone. As usual, Ted seemed to care more about blacks than he did about his own people. The Kennedys had never had it tough in their lives—who were they to sit down there at Hyannis Port and tell her what to do for the minorities? As fires stained the night sky over Roxbury, Alice turned off the set and went to bed.
4
Diver
SCARLETT: You, Mammy, go dig those yams like I told you!
MAMMY: Diggin’s fiel’ han’s business! Po’k an’ me’s house niggers!
SCARLETT: If you can’t work you can both get out.
PORK: Where’d we git out to, Miss Scarlett?
SCARLETT: You can get out to the Yankees for all I care!
A stab of yellow light in the aisle, then a hand lightly jogging his elbow brought the Mayor of Boston back from the fields of Tara. “Mr. Mayor, there’s a message for you,” said the usher, thrusting a slip of paper into his hand. In the flashlight’s beam, Kevin White read: “Martin Luther King has been assassinated in Memphis.”
For a moment, he sat there wondering what he should do. Then he thought: There’s nothing I
can
do. The man is dead. So he slipped the note into his pocket and went back to
Gone With the Wind
.
A few moments later another figure loomed in the aisle beside him, the Gary Theater’s manager whispering, “Mr. Mayor, I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but the Police Commissioner is on the phone. He says he needs to speak with you.” The Mayor told his secretary, Mary McCarthy, he’d be right back, but when he picked up the phone in the manager’s office, Commissioner Edmund L. McNamara said, “Mayor, we got trouble,” and went on to explain that gangs of black youths were out in Roxbury smashing store windows and overturning automobiles. With that, Kevin White abandoned Scarlett, Rhett, and Mammy in mid-saga and briskly walked the four blocks to police headquarters, where he stayed for several hours, helping coordinate efforts to control the violence, before joining his staff at City Hall.
In a corner of the Mayor’s cavernous office,
Jerry Doherty, a Townie ally of Ted’s, warned that such positions would cost him heavily in Charlestown. And indeed they did, for Teddy had never been so much an object of Charlestown’s affections as the beneficiary of its special relationship with Jack. And if Jack’s advance to the White House had released the Boston Irish from their anxiety about being only half American, so it had made them secure enough to reject an Irishman as well. Ultimately, many blue-collar Irish unloaded on Ted the pent-up envy and resentment they’d never dared to direct at Jack.
By the spring of 1968, at age thirty-one, Alice McGoff was beginning to feel some of her father’s sense of grievance at the Kennedy clan. She was still a committed Democrat; she couldn’t imagine herself voting for a Republican. But she found herself wondering whether the Kennedys were genuine Democrats any longer, whether they really had the interests of the white working class at heart.
Hours after Martin Luther King’s death, Ted Kennedy delivered an impassioned eulogy to the fallen prophet. “He was a noble man, eloquent, patient, and brave,” the Senator told reporters. “He loved his fellow man, white and black. He died because he was willing to go throughout this country, as a leader and a symbol, in an effort to bring them together.”
Watching the Senator on television, Alice felt a rush of anger at his smug, preachy tone. As usual, Ted seemed to care more about blacks than he did about his own people. The Kennedys had never had it tough in their lives—who were they to sit down there at Hyannis Port and tell her what to do for the minorities? As fires stained the night sky over Roxbury, Alice turned off the set and went to bed.
4
Diver
SCARLETT: You, Mammy, go dig those yams like I told you!
MAMMY: Diggin’s fiel’ han’s business! Po’k an’ me’s house niggers!
SCARLETT: If you can’t work you can both get out.
PORK: Where’d we git out to, Miss Scarlett?
SCARLETT: You can get out to the Yankees for all I care!
A stab of yellow light in the aisle, then a hand lightly jogging his elbow brought the Mayor of Boston back from the fields of Tara. “Mr. Mayor, there’s a message for you,” said the usher, thrusting a slip of paper into his hand. In the flashlight’s beam, Kevin White read: “Martin Luther King has been assassinated in Memphis.”
For a moment, he sat there wondering what he should do. Then he thought: There’s nothing I
can
do. The man is dead. So he slipped the note into his pocket and went back to
Gone With the Wind
.
A few moments later another figure loomed in the aisle beside him, the Gary Theater’s manager whispering, “Mr. Mayor, I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but the Police Commissioner is on the phone. He says he needs to speak with you.” The Mayor told his secretary, Mary McCarthy, he’d be right back, but when he picked up the phone in the manager’s office, Commissioner Edmund L. McNamara said, “Mayor, we got trouble,” and went on to explain that gangs of black youths were out in Roxbury smashing store windows and overturning automobiles. With that, Kevin White abandoned Scarlett, Rhett, and Mammy in mid-saga and briskly walked the four blocks to police headquarters, where he stayed for several hours, helping coordinate efforts to control the violence, before joining his staff at City Hall.
In a corner of the Mayor’s cavernous office,
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