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Tent City, once a triumph of community activism, is now home to strife over maintenance and security - The Boston Globe

bostonglobe.com · 1,746 words · saved by 1 readers

A group of protesters — most estimates pegged the crowd to be in the hundreds, although some say there were as many as 4,000 — camped out in a South End lot in tents and makeshift huts and lean-tos. They called it “Tent City.” And they weren’t going to move until they got their way. At the time, Boston, much like the rest of the country, was undergoing urban renewal, a process that often displaced people of color from neighborhoods a city deemed to be blighted. The West End’s residential core was gutted in the 1950s in the name of urban renewal progress, displacing thousands of Bostonians. Parts of the South End were also targeted with a wrecking ball. Years prior to Tent City, the city had leveled brick row houses in the fast-gentrifying neighborhood and reportedly planned to build a parking garage on the site — or luxury housing, according to other reports. But the occupiers, led by local civil rights icon Mel King, demanded the city instead build a low-cost housing complex. Advertis

In 1968, a Boston revolution began. A group of protesters — most estimates pegged the crowd to be in the hundreds, although some say there were as many as 4,000 — camped out in a South End lot in tents and makeshift huts and lean-tos. They called it “Tent City.” And they weren’t going to move until they got their way. At the time, Boston, much like the rest of the country, was undergoing urban renewal, a process that often displaced people of color from neighborhoods a city deemed to be blighted. The West End’s residential core was gutted in the 1950s in the name of urban renewal progress, dis

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