The subject of "White Flight" seemed to be trending recently, reminding me of the story of the Diver family, as detailed in the Pulitzer Prize winning “Common Ground” – One of the few even-handed depictions of urban collapse I can think of that broke out into the mainstream.
Dyer was a Harvard Law Review editor, and could have cashed-in at any prestigious law firm. Instead, Diver got idealistic about poverty and Civil Rights, and in 1968 he went to work for Boston Mayor Kevin White, during the years preceding the explosion of Boston's Busing Crisis.
Wanting to live in a diverse neighborhood, Dyer moved his family to Boston’s multiracial, not-quite gentrified South End (not to be confused with the Irish mini-ethno-city-state of South Boston). The Diver's parents were horrified.
The Divers were soon tripped-up by the desegregation policies they had so earnestly supported, when their young son was reassigned away from nearby, much-loved school. But unlike so many working-class White families, the Divers were able to get the school assignment reversed.
Alas, the Divers has less success dealing with the South End's skyrocket level of crime. They learned that the Busing Crisis had left Boston's police spread thin. They also learned that the ethnic cops had little sympathy for the liberal Yankee gentrifiers.
By late 1975, the neighborhood was deteriorating rapidly. One night Colin chased down a mugger and clobbered him with a Louisville Slugger.
Still a good liberal at heart, Diver was disturbed by his incredibly Chad act of community service.
Mrs. Diver wrote to Colin's old boss - Mayor White - letting him know the South End was becoming unlivable. The response was unimpressive,
The crime wave intensified. An elderly Greek man was killed. A young pharmacist was shot and paralysed by a burglar.
The increasingly desperate South Enders formed a neighborhood patrol. Colin's noticing intensifies - the patrol volunteers are overwhelmingly White. Their antagonists ... are not. The homeowners have learned the "never relax" rule.
Eventually, the police Intensified their effort; despite the demands of Busing enforcement - but this seems to have limited impact. The Divers' neighbors suffer a horrifying home invasion.
A development that will not surprise 2022 readers - the Divers realize that the problem is serial offenders, repeatedly bailed and put back on the street. Colin learns that even the mugger he chased down and clobbered later skipped bail and disappeared.
With her neighborhood being terrorized, liberal Joan Diver becomes something of a hawk on criminal justice reform. Other reformers are reluctant to address the divisive issue of lenient bail. Nevertheless, she persisted.
The Diver's dream of living in a harmonious multiracial neighborhood was dying. The attempted gentrification of the South End had failed. The Yankees were on the move again.
The Divers found a new home in safe, prosperous, Newton, MA. They were genuinely heartbroken to be leaving the South End. But they got one last shock to send them on their way, when 6-year-old Ned had a run-in with a robber: “Mommy, a robber’s stealing all Daddy’s money.”
Epilogue: Colin would go on to have an impressive career in academia, serving as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and President of Reed College. The Divers returned to Boston as retirees in 2012.
And in the 1990s, as crime plunged in Boston and across America, gentrification finally came to the South End. The brownstone on West Newton Street that the Divers had bought as a fixer-upper for $27,000 in 1970 is now estimated to be worth around 4.5 million.
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