Encomiums have poured in for the mayor who held office from 1968 to 1984, and they are richly deserved. White was - indisputably - the mayor who dragged Boston into modernity, one of the most important mayors in the city’s history.
But his impact is far more complicated than a glance at the skyline can reveal. Because the plain fact is that during school desegregation - the greatest challenge a Boston mayor has faced in modern times - White was paralyzed.
White had come to power, if not exactly as a racial healer, at least as a foe of division. In his first race for mayor, in 1967, blacks and Latinos favored White over Louise Day Hicks by a wide margin. He won plaudits for inclusiveness, which was encouraged by a gifted staff that recognized a changing city. One of his finest moments came in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., when his actions helped spare Boston the violence that struck in many other cities.
But White’s legendary political instincts failed him badly during busing. White believed that it was a terrible political mistake to take ownership of problems you didn’t have the power to solve - chief among them, public schools and public housing. So he walked away from the problems he felt he could not solve.
Perhaps no mayor could have bridged the divide that plagued the city. But White alienated many blacks who thought he did too little to stop the violence in Charlestown and South Boston, and many whites who thought he’d done too little to prevent busing.
After narrowly being elected to a third term in the tumultuous race of 1975 - the last great mayor’s race - White took on a new persona: the mayor as master builder, focused on downtown development. Partly this was visionary, but it was also driven by his feeling that his supporters in the neighborhoods had betrayed him. His legacy would be cemented at the expense of those neighborhoods; schools and public housing suffered from his neglect while tall buildings dotted the skyline. Eventually working-class Boston seethed.
Indeed, the verdict on White that J. Anthony Lukas rendered in “Common Ground’’ rings true: “Problems of the neighborhoods were systemic, rooted in intractable divisions of race and class, while downtown could be treated with quick infusions of cash and chic. Gradually, the mayor took the easy way out.’’
The race to succeed White eventually came down to Ray Flynn and Mel King, and their contrast with White was telling. They ran on pledges to restore power to the neighborhoods, just as White had in 1967. After 16 years of White’s polish and elegance, Flynn prevailed.
White left office under federal investigation, but he also left the city with a new image of itself that has endured. Like many politicians, he is probably more beloved now than he was on his last day in office. How ironic that the very quality he was most assailed for - becoming the mayor of downtown - now stands as his great achievement, his legacy.
