My Southie Story

For one of our recent Member Development Friday’s I helped facilitate a discussion about educational equality and bussing as one attempt at achieving that in Boston today. We watched the Boston bussing section of the award winning Civil Rights documentary Eyes on the Prize, and discussed our reactions to that film. We were shocked by the violence that occurred, some of it directed at children who were just trying to go to school, white parents throwing rocks and hurling obscenities at young black children in Southie. It was especially surprising to think about how recent these events were. Many of the older adult volunteers who serve at our schools were living in Boston during this time, touched by these events. It was a pretty dark era in the history of South Boston (know to the locals as “Southie”).


But let’s back up a bit, to how I ended up discussing educational equality with fellow Americorps members at Generations Incorporated. I guess it started as graduation neared senior year of college. I often thought to myself ‘what now?’ I knew I wanted to be an educator, but was not sure if I was cut out to be a teacher. I heard about Americorps, a year long service opportunity, and with extensive community service and nonprofit experience, it seemed that spending another year in service was a fitting next step. When I came across Generations Incorporated I was struck by the uniqueness of their mission to bring together youth and older adults through literacy based mentoring. I was excited about the chance to explore my interest in education, while also working with diverse populations, diverse in all senses of the word. Many organizations that Americorps members work with engage low-income communities, but with Generations Incorporated there is also the element of diversity in age.



Generations Incorporated (GI) places volunteers in schools and afterschools across Boston and Revere, so when I got my placement at a small school in South Boston, I was a little surprised. With great-grandparents who came over from Ireland with the last name Connolly, I wasn’t expecting too much in terms of diversity in my placement, based on what I had heard about South Boston. I wanted to learn all I could about the area, and I started by reading Michael Macdonald’s All Souls: A Family Story from Southie, and was struck by the images of the racial and class struggle of the 1970s during Boston’s bussing crisis. As my year of service progressed, I craved more background and history of the area . I read J. Anthony Lukas’ Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, a compelling depiction of urban life in Boston in the 70s, including an in-depth look at exchanges among different ethnicities in the search for educational equality. Some Bostonians developed community schools that tried to bridge the education gap. While some of these succeeded, many proved insufficient, so communities reached out to the Boston Public School Board and eventually the courts for a fair chance for their children to receive a quality education. The bussing that resulted produced mixed results. In many neighborhoods integration occurred peacefully, but some featured significant violence. I was so struck by this decades old debate and the injustice that occurred right here where I serve today. I have also seen that the volunteers at my site have not forgotten the events of that time, and for many it is still a raw, emotional issue. I saw the relevance of the issue to our older adult volunteers and felt the urge to share some of this story with my fellow Americorps members, and that is how I came to facilitating the discussion.


So what’s it like in Southie today? That’s what my Americorps State team members wanted to know after our discussion. Well, it’s not like in that video, I can say for sure. Walking the streets of South Boston near my school, The Perkins Elementary, you’ll find people of just about every skin color, age range, ethnic background, and religion, and that heterogeneity is reflected in the student body of my small school. Of course it’s not all happy harmony, but for the most part, it’s an atmosphere of relative accord in the neighborhood. The people of South Boston have worked hard to put the past behind them, and it shows today. It means something that most of my fellow Americorps members had no idea the kind of racial violence that went on around educational issues in these neighborhoods not so long ago. The neighborhood has come a long way. But there’s still a ways to go. I’m happy to be a small part of an organization that does something to bring older adults from neighborhoods across the greater Boston area to work with students who may not be like themselves. I couldn’t ask for a richer experience for my service year.

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Kelly Connolly is an Americorps State Program Coordinator. You can email her at kconnolly@generationsinc.org.