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A three-acre site in Boston’s South End was the center of a major four-day protest in April 1968 against the urban renewal plans of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which had forcibly displaced residents and demolished 68 homes, a community center, and two parks in the area. Civil rights leader Melvin H. “Mel” King and other activists established a “tent city” that was briefly home to more than 400 protesters. Twenty years after the protest in 1988, an alliance of non-profit developers, the Tent City Corporation, opened the 269-unit mixed-income housing development called Tent City, named for the historic demonstration.

History

April 1968 was a time of turmoil in America. The assassination of Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4 unleashed a torrent of emotions across the country. Feelings of anger, disillusionment, and grief prompted thousands to take to the streets in American cities, rioting and protesting in response to Dr. King’s death. In Boston, where Martin Luther King, Jr., had spent many years as a doctoral student at Boston University, James Brown staged a concert the day following the assassination to help avert widespread violence. Brown, Mayor Kevin White, and Councilor Tom Atkins addressed the crowd together, calling for peace. Regardless, tensions simmered.

Even before Dr. King’s death, Boston was amid a transformation. In the early twentieth century, a growing industrial economy and the Second Great Migration attracted African American, Latino, and Caribbean families to the city’s South End neighborhood. Originally an expanse of uninhabitable tidal marsh surrounding the urbanized peninsula of Boston, the South End was progressively infilled and developed through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The community became typified by broad commercial avenues and gridded residential streets lined by brick rowhouses in the Queen Anne, Renaissance Revival, Greek Revival, and Italianate styles. Wealthy residents quickly acquired the finest homes, organized around leafy green squares, while middle class families moved into subdivided rowhouse apartments. Tenements and lodging houses sited furthest from the neighborhood’s parks welcomed the city’s rapidly growing industrial workforce. As the neighborhood grew and diversified in the twentieth century, a community of middle-class African American residents flourished. African American businesses, churches, and entertainment venues prospered in South End, and the Boston Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sited its first headquarters at the corner of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues. But following the 1934 passage of the National Housing Act, legally-enforced social and economic redlining diverted resources from this diverse corner of the city.

In 1957, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) was established to oversee all city planning and development, and the South End became one of its first areas of focus. Two years later, they announced the first of a series of plans for sweeping demolitions across the South End, a process nominally intended to rid the city of blight and make way for new commercial development, but which effectively displaced thousands of families, primarily African American. Community backlash was immediate, but the BRA proved to be a powerful opponent. Melvin H. “Mel” King, a local activist, founded the Community Alliance for a Unified South End (CAUSE) in 1967 to organize residents facing displacement.

Against this backdrop of national unrest and local opposition, in April of 1968 the BRA carried out the demolition of a block at the corner of Columbus and Dartmouth Avenues containing 68 single- and multi-family rowhouses, a community center, and two parks, and announced that a parking garage would be developed on the site. As was the case with previous BRA projects, numerous families were displaced without relocation. On Thursday, April 25, CAUSE organized a sit-in at the offices of the BRA, and over the next 24 hours, staged a plan to peacefully occupy the lot at Columbus and Dartmouth to raise awareness about the need for affordable housing.

Tent City: A Place for People

By the morning of Friday, April 26, King and a group of activists reclaimed the lot as “a place for people.” Resistance was swift: King was struck by a counter-protestor driving a Volkswagen bus, which led to an outbreak of fighting. Law enforcement arrested 23 protestors, but soon released them on their own recognizance, with some officers even expressing support for King’s efforts. Undaunted, the demonstrators returned to the site and were soon joined by crowds of supporters.

Over the next three days, hundreds of people gathered at what came to be called, “Tent City,” so named for the tented and wooden shanty houses erected on site. Design and engineering students from Boston’s many research institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and Tufts University, helped organize and build the encampment’s makeshift houses, gathering spaces, and community kitchens. Occupants embraced the title and installed signs welcoming members of the media to their “city.” The atmosphere was festive and peaceful. Musicians played and the noted Boston Celtic, Bill Russell, supplied protestors food from his nearby restaurant, Slade’s Bar & Grill. The energy, tenacity, and unity of the protest attracted national media coverage and drew attention to the racially discriminatory redevelopment practices in Boston. Police continuously ordered the protestors to vacate the site, and on April 30th, the demonstrators complied. Public support engendered by the protestors pressured the BRA to reconsider their plans. Additionally, the Episcopal Diocese donated $10,000 to CAUSE, empowering King to continue his advocacy efforts.