Speaking Monday on Boston Public Radio, Imari Paris Jeffries said he’s optimistic about the long-term impact of the city's latest string of antiracist measures, going as far as to say he believes Boston “might be the only city,” or at least the first city, with a chance of fulfilling the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of true social equality.
Paris Jeffries is the executive director of King Boston, the group behind a forthcoming memorial to King, Coretta Scott King and other Civil Rights-era leaders on Boston Common. The 22-foot high sculpture, titled The Embrace, is scheduled to be finished sometime in the spring of 2022 and will commemorate the time King and others racial justice leaders spent in the city.
King famously studied theology at Boston University and met his wife, Coretta Scott, while she was studying voice at the Boston Conservatory.
"There’s an alternate universe,” Paris Jeffries imagined, where the two stuck around and made Boston the center of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement.
"And so this is our second chance to do that," he said, speaking about the work of groups like his, the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, the Boston Foundation and the increasingly diverse city leadership.
Boston's legacy on racial justice is notoriously dismal. A study conducted for a 2017 Boston Globe Spotlight series found Black Americans ranked Boston as the “least welcoming” to people of color. That finding was compounded by data showing vast economic disparities between the median net worth of Black Bostonians and their white counterparts. Recent GBH investigations, too, revealed that Massachusetts state leaders failed to follow through on some of their most forward-facing antiracist initatives.
But Paris Jeffries said he belives the city is making strides.
"Bostonians hear information, and we try to respond as best as we can," he said. "I think the transformation of leadership is one response to that story."
In addition to the memorial on Boston Common, King Boston is in the process of creating the King Center for Economic Justice in Roxbury, where workers will advocate for racial equity.
On Monday night, the organization will also be debuting “ Voices on King,” a documentary made in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts and Citizens Bank about the legacy of the two Civil Rights icons.
