Everything about Kevin White Mayor totally explained
Kevin Hagan White (born
September 25,
1929) is an American politician best known as the longest-serving
Mayor of Boston, a position he held from
1967 to
1983.
Early years
White was educated at
Tabor Academy,
Williams College (AB,
1952),
Boston College Law School (LLB,
1955) and the
Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration (now known as the John F. Kennedy School of Government). Prior to his term as Mayor of Boston, he served as
Secretary of the Commonwealth from
1961–
1967.
Early political life
White successfully ran for Mayor in
1967 on a populist platform that included support for
rent control. One of his slogans was "When landlords raise rents, Kevin White raises hell." Rent control became the law in Boston in
1970.
(External Link
) White beat
Louise Day Hicks who had taken a strong anti-desegregation position as a member of the Boston School Committee. Hicks' slogan was the coded "You know where I stand." White won by approximately 12,000 votes after he was endorsed by the
Boston Globe, the paper's first political endorsement in decades. Mayor White defeated Hicks by a larger margin in his bid for a second term.
Other political races
In 1970, White unsuccessfully ran for
Governor of Massachusetts against
Republican Frank Sargent. White's running mate was
Michael Dukakis, who later challenged and defeated Sargent for the Governor's office in
1974. White's campaign for governor was interrupted for several days when he underwent emergency stomach surgery.
In
1972, he was on the verge of the
Democratic Party's
vice-presidential nomination. After a number of better known politicians, including Senators
Ted Kennedy and
Gaylord Nelson, and Governor
Reubin Askew, turned down the position, White briefly became the front-runner for the post. However, when Kennedy, famed
economist John Kenneth Galbraith and others in the Massachusetts delegation voiced their opposition to White's nomination, Presidential nominee Senator
George McGovern decided to turn elsewhere and selected Senator
Thomas Eagleton, who was later embroiled in a
controversy over his failure to disclose having received electric shock therapy for depression. Ultimately, the vice presidential nominee as former Chicago School Board President and later Ambassador
R. Sargent Shriver, who had married into the Kennedy family.
On
November 1,
2006, a statue of White was unveiled at Boston's
Faneuil Hall. The statue portrays White walking down the side walk. Behind the statue are several metal footprints along the sidewalk. With these are several quotes from White which were made during his inauguration speeches.
Boston in the 1970s
The 1970s were a turbulent time for Boston. In
1974, Judge
W. Arthur Garrity found that the Boston School Committee had followed a practice of segregating the city's public schools by race, including building new schools in districts tailored to white constituents. As a remedy, Garrity ordered the city's schools desegregated, leading to a system of
desegregation busing. The desegregation didn't go peacefully, and violence wasn't uncommon. In one famous incident in 1976 during a demonstration outside
Boston City Hall, a black
businessman was attacked with an American flag.
White also worked for the revitalization of Boston's downtown. In
1976, he achieved perhaps his biggest success in that area with the re-opening of
Quincy Market.
In the 1975 and 1979 Mayoral elections, Mayor White defeated State Senator Joe Timilty. He retired in 1983 and was succeeded by Ray Flynn.
Health
In 1970, during his campaign for governor, White underwent surgery that removed two-thirds of his stomach. In 2001, the since-retired White suffered a
heart attack which left him with a pacemaker. In his advanced age, he's lost hearing in his right ear and is suffering from
Alzheimer's disease (External Link).
Quote
White made this statement in light of Boston's finances:
» It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either.
Throughout the 1970s, Cleveland was the long-standing butt of jokes and by the early 1980s, city residents were getting fed up. Former Cleveland Mayor and current U.S. Senator from Ohio
George Voinovich complained about White's controversial statement. He responded by saying that Boston had survived facetious remarks from a wide range of jokesters, from
Mark Twain to
Johnny Carson. "I am sure Cleveland will also," he said.
External links and references
Further Information
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