Photos: How Boston grappled with racial tensions the last time the NAACP convention was in town

Here's a look back at the decades of advocacy of the NAACP's Boston branch.Ryan Huddle

By 1982, the last time Boston hosted the NAACP’s annual convention, the city had become ground zero for race relations in America.

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Violent riots — mostly by white people — erupted in the mid-1970s after a federal court judge ordered the city to bus students to schools outside their neighborhoods to combat racial segregation. Then Black people were targeted by a slew of hate crimes, including in 1977, when white men with hockey sticks and golf clubs attacked Black tourists in Charlestown.

By that point, Boston had already been named host of the 1982 convention, though its national reputation for racism had worsened. But the conference location would not change.

“Boston had always been a hotbed,” said Joseph D. Feaster Jr., then president of the NAACP’s Boston chapter. “There was no reason not to bring the convention to Boston.”

This week, as the convention returns to the city of the NAACP’s first chartered branch, local leaders are still trying to repair Boston’s image and lay the foundation for a more equitable future.

The Boston NAACP headquarters, damaged in a firebombing, on Dec. 9, 1975. DAN SHEEHAN/GLOBE STAFF

The May-June 1982 issue of EPOCH, "a Black family magazine," featured a spread looking ahead to the NAACP national convention in Boston. It included a look at the issues affecting various regions of the country, including this snapshot of New England and the northeast. The magazine stated that major issues facing this region revolved around "minority citizens getting their 'fair share' of both the economic and political pie."

A clipping from the April 7, 1982, edition of The Boston Globe quoted national NAACP executive director Benjamin L. Hooks saying that Boston’s already “suffering image as a progressive city” was further tarnished by the killing of a Black man on MBTA Red Line tracks near Savin Hill station after he was chased and attacked by a group of white youths.

In the summer of 1979, the Boston NAACP surveyed over 200 Black teenagers in the city about various topics. The results were featured in the 1979 program for the branch’s annual awards banquet. Half the teens said racial tensions in Boston had no effect on their lives. When asked if they think there will ever be racial harmony in the United States, just 17.8 percent responded positively.

A clipping from the May 21, 1982, edition of the Globe featured an interview with a Black woman who had her Dorchester house firebombed in a racially targeted attack.

The June 13, 1982, edition of the Globe featured a story about then-Mayor Kevin White being held to account over his lack of public comments about a recent firebombing attack on a Black family home.

The NAACP-sponsored march in favor of busing desegregation moved down Commonwealth Avenue towards a rally on Boston Common on May 17, 1975. An initiative to desegregate Boston Public Schools was implemented in the fall of 1974 and was met with strong resistance from many residents of Boston’s neighborhoods. TED DULLY

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Some may say Boston hasn’t changed. But Feaster, who has lived here nearly 60 years, disagrees. Boston was never the South, he said. Folks here weren’t hanged or burned.

“We’ve had issues, but I don’t think we’re the worst city for race relations in this country,” said Feaster, a lawyer with the firm Dain, Torpy, Le Ray, Wiest, & Garner P.C. who also chairs the city’s Task Force on Reparations and heads the board of directors of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts.

Still, there were days in Boston where you couldn’t go into a neighborhood without getting harassed or even firebombed, he said.

Joseph D. Feaster Jr. Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff

Feaster began serving with the Boston NAACP in 1974, taking over as president from 1978 through 1983, a period marked by high-profile civil rights cases, including the school desegregation case that led to the busing crisis in Boston.

In the 1970s, the Boston chapter was also filing a number of lawsuits challenging housing discrimination by the City of Boston and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Coalitions of leaders led by the Rev. Jeffrey Brown and others were also working to address youth violence within the Black community.

Plus, Black Bostonians, dissatisfied with City Hall’s predominantly white makeup, rallied to register Black voters and amped up its critiques of those in leadership, said Charlotte M. Nelson, a program coordinator for Northeastern University’s School of Law. Nelson, a former president of the NAACP New England Area Conference, worked with Feaster and dozens to coordinate the ’82 convention.

‘If you want to pick a city, you want to pick a city that’s going to bring attention, and that it did.’

Joseph D. Feaster Jr., former president of the NAACP’s Boston chapter

Then-Mayor Kevin White pledged to confront racism “directly and aggressively” but was facing criticism for not speaking out enough about attacks on Black Bostonians, among other issues.

“There was still a lot of back and forth between Kevin White and Black citizens on employment, especially on employing Black people in key decision-making roles,” she said.

The heightened tensions at the time emboldened the Black community, which understood that the city was under a national spotlight.

“That convinced the national [NAACP] leadership that if you want to pick a city, you want to pick a city that’s going to bring attention, and that it did,” Feaster said of the decision to name Boston the 1982 host. The goal wasn’t just to draw attention to the horrors Black Bostonians were facing, but also to their strength and action to stand up for their rights.

The two-page cover for 1979 program for the NAACP Boston branch’s annual awards banquet, with a theme focused on youth.

The 1982 national convention program featured advertisements and promotions from various organizations, including Harvard University, which promoted its Black Women Oral History Project, which it launched in 1976. Among other famous Black women professionals, the ad featured Melnea Cass, the beloved Boston-based civil rights advocate, who served as the NAACP Boston branch’s president in the 1960s.

The cover of the 1982 NAACP national convention program.

The 1981 NAACP Boston annual award banquet program featured a number of prominent Black Bostonians who were awarded for their excellence and service in various fields. One of them was Elma Lewis, the Boston arts educator, who won an award for arts and sciences. Lewis opened the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts in Roxbury in 1950 before an arson forced the school to shutter in 1986, and also founded the National Center of Afro-American Artists in 1968. She was also one of the founders of Metco, the voluntary school integration program.

The cover of the May-June 1982 issue of EPOCH Magazine looked ahead to the NAACP’s national convention in Boston, featuring prominent members of the group’s leadership.

A spread in the May-June 1982 issue of EPOCH Magazine looked ahead to the 1982 NAACP national convention in Boston, featuring an interview with Boston branch president Joseph D. Feaster Jr.

Joseph D. Feaster Jr., president of the NAACP’s Boston branch, welcomed visitors in the 1982 national convention program. “Despite the numerous accounts of racial violence and strife which have plagued Boston over the past few years, we assure you that your stay here will be rewarding and a memorable one,” Feaster wrote.

A photo spread of Black Boston children in the 1979 program for the NAACP Boston branch’s annual awards banquet.

A photo of members of the Boston NAACP in the 1977 annual awards banquet program. Standing, from left to right: Kim Robinson, William J. Bryant, Charlotte M. Nelson, Davis C. Young, Jeanne Q. Tibbs, Grainger Browning Jr., and Le Ann V. Johnson. Seated, from left to right: Raymond Anderson, Valderia A. Moore, Leon T. Nelson, Bettye J. Robinson, and Frank Bispham.

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“Massachusetts and Boston in particular wanted to put on its best face, so we had the attention of the state government, the federal government, we had the attention of city government under Kevin White,” Feaster said. But at the end of the day, “the community was front and center of planning for this convention, from a local perspective.”

The priorities for that year’s convention were wide-ranging. The NAACP had always focused on education and student achievement, but segregation became a big topic, too, along with unemployment in the Black community and housing discrimination. The Boston chapter had also been challenging hiring practices in Boston police and fire departments.

This time around, the hot-button issues of today — such as abortion, affirmative action, and public education curriculums around race — will drive the convention, but subjects such as housing and economic inequality will be a mainstay.

“One hundred and fourteen years [after the NAACP’s founding], and we’re still dealing with the same inequities,” Nelson said. “Isn’t that something?”

Yet, Nelson believes that attendees of this week’s convention will see a new Boston. For starters, it now has a Seaport District. South Boston isn’t a place for Black people to avoid anymore. And now it has The Embrace sculpture, which represents a shift in the city’s narrative of its own history.

But all those changes haven’t been for the best, Nelson said. For example, a lot of the Black-owned establishments in Roxbury and the South End — places ’82 convention planners listed in travel guides for visiting delegates — are long gone, with few replacements.

“There’s all those boarded-up buildings smack dab in the middle of Nubian Square when you’ve got all this glimmering stuff happening in the Seaport,” Nelson said. “Where’s the equity?”

Today, there is still work to be done, particularly around wealth disparity, housing segregation, and inequities in education, and the Boston NAACP is here once again, playing an important role.

“We’re still going strong, an organization started in 1911, and we’re still going to be here,” Feaster said. “Our mission is the same, and those pillars — education, housing, employment — those are the things the NAACP is going to be fighting for, against discrimination in any form that presents itself.”

Related:

• For local leaders, the NAACP’s return to Boston is an opportunity to change the city’s image
• The NAACP convention in Boston kicks off this week. Here’s what you need to know.
• Where to eat when you’re in Boston for the NAACP convention
• Read more coverage of the NAACP national convention in Boston