In 1976 Queen Elizabeth II visited Boston to celebrate the U.S. Bicentennial. GBH's politics editor Peter Kadzis was a reporter for the Boston Globe at the time, covering the historic visit. He joined GBH's Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel talk about the visit and what it meant to a city on the verge of change. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Jeremy Siegel: So bring us back to that day nearly 50 years ago. You're a young reporter, you find out the queen's coming. Take us back to what happens next.
Peter Kadzis: Well, I was just a foot soldier in an army of reporters who were covering that event. It was July 11th, if I remember correctly, a beautiful, classic New England summer day. I only saw the queen for a few moments here and there. I was around City Hall and near the old statehouse. I was amazed at what a small woman she was. Her husband towered over her. She wore a brightly colored dress. She had one of her signature hats on. The crowd was just in perfect sympathy with her. I mean, it was just an almost transcendental moment. It made the whole city of Boston feel great.
Paris Alston: Michael Dukakis was the governor of Massachusetts at the time. And he spoke about the queen's visit, saying that she arrived on her yacht, Britannia.
Kadzis: Well, a lot of the coverage today is focusing on former Governor Mike Dukakis. But the politician who was at the center of it all was then-Mayor Kevin White, who was beaming. You would think that he had wings on his shoes and that he was having a hard time just descending into the clouds. And that's because back in those days during the White administration, Boston still had a chip on its shoulder. The big, vibrant, very wealthy city we know today was very different. It was a work-in-progress. It was heading to where we are today. But Kevin White was always talking about making Boston a world-class city. And the queen's visit seemed emblematic of that. It embodied all his hopes and dreams for the larger city, and I think the people felt that way themselves.
Boston was still, as it almost always is, politically divided. And in those days it was divided between people like Kevin White, whose vision was really looking forward, and other people like Joe Timilty or Louise Day Hicks, whose vision in retrospect was very much looking back. So this was a landmark event in the sort of psychological history of Boston.
Siegel: It's wild as someone who grew up with the queen but was not alive then to look back at photos of this trip, to hear you speaking about it, to see the queen alongside Governor Dukakis going through the North End beneath banners saying "The North End welcomes the Queen." She's celebrating the independence of a country that was under the U.K.'s rule, a country with a long history of colonialism. In 2011, she also became the first monarch to visit Ireland after it gained independence from Britain. Another visit with significance here in Boston, given our Irish and Irish-American community. I'm curious, given all of that, how you're remembering this visit, its significance and how it ties to the queen's legacy?
"It was it was a moment of coming of age for many in the Irish political class."-Peter Kadzis, GBH Politics Editor
Kadzis: That's a good opportunity for me to point out that there were signs in the crowd that read "England, Out of Ireland, support the I.R.A.," the Irish Republican Army. Boston was then the predominantly Irish city, at least in political terms, and the queen's visit, in a way, marked the coming of the Boston immigrant Irish. You know, this was their moment. Their former adversary, as in the British queen, was now coming to pay tribute to them. And that's something that I think we tend to overlook. It was a moment of coming of age for many in the Irish political class. What's interesting, too, is what the queen said in the Old North Church couldn't be said today. She spoke about a united America, not just the United States, but her reference was to shared values, a common vision in America, which we had in 1976 and which, sad to say, we don't have today.
Alston: So really quickly, Peter, how do we remember the queen in Boston today?
Kadzis: I think, as a classy lady.
