Mel King, Presente!
Mel King died in March, 2023 at the age of 94. A lifelong resident of the South End neighborhood of Boston, he was active in creating community programs and institutions for low-income people in the city and was the founder of the South End Technology Center. At the time of his death, he held the position of Senior Lecturer Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in their Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
After serving as Director of the New Urban League of Greater Boston and Youth Director at the United South End Settlements (USES), he was fired from the latter position when he promoted neighborhood control rather than government control. Community protests of his firing resulted in his being rehired and given the job of Community Organizer!
His political impact was notable. After serving for many years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Democrat, King founded the Rainbow Coalition Party (RCP) in that state in 1997. In 2002 the RCP merged with the Massachusetts Green Party to become the Green-Rainbow Party, the Massachusetts affiliate of the Green Party of the United States. That same year Mel supported Green-Rainbow Party nominee Jill Stein for governor, saying: “Jill Stein is the only candidate who will speak truth to power. She’s the only one who makes issues of racism and social justice integral parts of her campaign.”
Mel King remained an active member of the Green-Rainbow Party until his passing. His book, Chain of Change: Struggles for Black Community Development, focused on housing, education, employment, and political issues in Boston from the 1950s through the 1970s. Inspired by young activists, he reprinted it in 2018. Two years ago an intersection in Boston’s South End was named the “Mel King Square” in his honor.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Mel King: The Arc of the Rainbow Bends Towards Love
By Eli Beckerman
Mel King Mural, painted by Genaro Ortega, at Madison Park High School in Boston, MA.
Mel King Mural, painted by Genaro Ortega, at Madison Park High School in Boston, MA. [/caption]Boston lost its Lion King in March with the passing of Melvin H. King at the age of 94. It is impossible to summarize the impact that Mel’s life had on the city, and on the people who endeavor to do justice to his life and vision.
State Senator Lydia Edwards put it this way: “All I can say is thank you. There will be a list of political accolades that expand over decades that speak to Mel’s vision and intellect. But it was his steadfast dedication to revolutionary connection every Sunday at his house that left a lasting mark … the act of breaking bread, enjoying food and thoughts. Thank you, Mel, for fighting, running, laughing, and living. Rest in power.”
King brilliantly balanced holistic, big-picture thinking with small-scale, person-to-person interactions that called all of us to our higher selves. He knew that large-scale systemic change must be modeled at the community level and built through collaborative action. He was a teacher, an organizer, a writer, an artist, a state legislator—and a transformative candidate for Boston Mayor. Mel knew that his 1983 campaign had put a marker in the sand and that the city would never look back. On election night, Mel described the campaign as “what historians will recognize as a turning point in the social, cultural, and political history of Boston.” Indeed, it ushered in, through countless interactions over the following years, today’s Boston which is brimming with visionary leadership reflective of its diverse populations.
At Mel’s four-hour memorial service and “homegoing celebration,” Boston’s Green New Deal Mayor, Michelle Wu, remarked: “Mel’s flame burned with a radiance and warmth that found and was felt in every corner of our city; and everywhere he went, he carried that light with him. He held it up to our hearts and kindled it to a determination and love for justice and community. He held it up to our city, and kindled the heart of Boston, a heart that burns brighter every day with the fire of his legacy.” She continued with a personal tale that rings true to everyone who knew of Mel and his wife Joyce’s profound sharing through their welcoming Sunday brunches: “I remember the first time I had the chance to join the brunch table, as a new neighbor in the South End, struggling with the day-to-day of how to put one foot in front of the other, raising my sisters, trying to care for my mom, in the throes of crisis, and wondering, ‘where do we belong?’ And I made my way because I heard that all were welcome at Miss Joyce and Mel’s table. And over those little fruit cups, I found myself taking in a big helping of community. A belonging of connection. Of love. And I walked out of there feeling for the first time in this city, that maybe my family and I could belong.”
Mel’s 1983 mayoral campaign gave Boston the Rainbow Coalition, which was borrowed by Jesse Jackson at the national level in two successive campaigns for president. In 1997, King recognized that a new political formation was necessary and he founded the Rainbow Coalition Party. In 2002 he proudly led them into a merger with the Massachusetts Green Party.
A month after Mel’s death, another giant—Harry Belafonte—joined him as an ancestor. In a remarkable documentary about Belafonte’s life, Sing Your Song, he recounts a revelation that came late to him: “Those of us who were part of the civil rights movement, as we grew older, as victories began to evidence themselves, I think we took a lot for granted. I don’t think we secured the way in which to pass on the baton.” He first called a gathering of the elders, and then “began to understand that the thing I needed to do next was call a gathering of the young. There perhaps would lay the key.” That insight was intuitive to Mel King. He was focused on the young people in his community from the very beginning. He knew that empowering them was the key. And, like Belafonte, Mel knew the power of song. At the 2009 Green-Rainbow Party convention, he had the entire convention divide up into breakout groups to write and then perform uplifting anthems of joyful struggle for change.
His politics represented something entirely distinct from the prevailing image and practice of US politics. They drew on rich traditions of the African diaspora, woven through the growing political consciousness of the civil rights era and the deepening practice of community organizing. Love and listening and respect and learning were at the center. Sharing was a core principle. Sharing over bread was even better.
As I reflect on what’s possible in one lifetime, and the lessons that Mel’s life generously leaves for those of us who follow, it feels important to honor his gift and his legacy. In many ways, Mel was the consummate ecological political actor; and his deep impact on the city of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts continues to ripple out in waves infused with his spirit.
Love of power builds fences.
The power of love opens doors.
Love of power requires institutions.
The power of love builds community.
Love of power sets limits.
The power of love is infinite.
— Mel King
Rest in peace. Rest in power. Rest in love. Mel King, presente.
Eli Beckerman was co-chair of the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts with Jill Stein from 2008-2009 and worked for her nonprofit, the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
In memoriam: Mel King
By Jill Stein
Mel King speaking in 2010.
The Green-Rainbow Party mourns the loss of Mel King, an icon of Boston politics and founding father of the Green-Rainbow Party, who died at home on March 28. Mel King was a poet, politician, philosopher, and irrepressible force for good. He inspired the best in everyone he touched, as a man who knew no enemies, and for whom “love is the question and the answer.”
As a fearless, unstoppable agent of change, Mel launched the Rainbow Coalition Party in 1997, saying Bill Clinton’s welfare “reform” and immigration policies were “unconscionable … I cannot be identified with parties that have those kinds of policies, and which really don’t care about workers.” In 2002 Mel led the merger of the Rainbow Coalition and Green parties to “give more strength to our collective and individual voices” for our shared principles and agendas.
Mel was defiant in the face of fear-mongering against alternative parties. “I get angry at the use of fear to exert control, and that’s all it is about … control. Every vote ought to be a revolutionary act. It ought to be about change. This country offers too many possibilities to allow that kind of fear to keep anyone from being who they truly are and from voting for a future they truly want.”
Mel King was the inspiration for so much of what is just and decent in politics today. He was ahead of the curve throughout his decades of activism, including his pioneering legislation for community gardens, access to sustainable fresh food, and community development corporations to provide affordable housing and jobs for people, not profit. Mel’s vision and courage are more timely and more needed than ever. The Green-Rainbow Party is honored to carry forward his living political legacy.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Remembering Mel King
By Howie Hawkins
Mel King (circa 1975)
Mel King died this week on March 28, 2023 at age 94. Here are a few obituaries that will give you some idea of the scope of his activism and his impact: WBUR, Boston Globe, NY Times.
I want add here a personal remembrance that focuses on his impact on the Green Party.
I first met Mel King in the late 1970s in connection with the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements. He extended to me, as he did to all activists, an invitation to stop by his house in Boston’s South End where he hosted a brunch and discussion for activists on most Sundays. I was living in Vermont but was able to stop by a few times over the years. There I encountered other activists with whom I have worked over the years.
One of them was Bill Fletcher Jr. Mel introduced him to me simply as Bill Fletcher as if he was someone I would already know by reputation. I actually didn’t know Bill at all. At the time Bill was a welder and organizing Black workers in Boston. He would go on to be a leader of socialist and Black radical organizations, a staffer for unions and the national AFL-CIO, and president of TransAfrica. When I was running for president, Bill was the co-author of articles and open letters arguing against my Green presidential campaign and for critically supporting Biden in order to defeat Trump and his far-right movement. Of course, I did not agree and wrote responses. In the last year, however, we have worked together to organize the Ukraine Solidarity Network (US).
The relevance of this story to Mel King is that the most important lesson I have taken from Mel’s many public talks and private conversations was his emphasis on respecting and never burning bridges to people with whom you disagree, both people in the movements as well as the general public. He would always say things like, “If we don’t believe we can persuade people, how do we think we are going to build a majority movement to transform society”? That approach, which Mel King embodied, is why I think he had such respect in Boston, both across the progressive movements and from the general public and even his political adversaries in Boston and Massachusetts politics.
A piece of history Mel made that I think has been not been appreciated is his role in promoting the idea of the Rainbow Coalition as a movement that unites people across race and gender. When he was breaking with the Democratic Party with whom he had been elected to the state legislature in 1973 and was building his campaign for mayor of Boston in 1983, he called his campaign the Rainbow Coalition, reviving the concept of the original Rainbow Coalition organized in 1969 by Fred Hampton and the Chicago Black Panther Party. The next year, I saw Jesse Jackson’s first presidential campaign come through Vermont and New Hampshire as simply the Jesse Jackson campaign. The next stop was Boston where Mel King hosted a campaign event. The Jackson campaign came out of Boston calling itself the Rainbow Coalition.
After the 1988 campaign, Jesse Jackson folded the Rainbow Coalition, which had become an ongoing organization between his 1984 and 1988 campaigns, into his PUSH organization. But the Massachusetts Rainbow Coalition did not fold and in 1997 became the Rainbow Coalition Party. In 2002, it merged with the Green Party to form the Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party that we have today.
Mel was one of the featured speakers at the first open national conference of the Green Party movement held in Amherst, Massachusetts in July 1987 that was attended by some 1,500 people. Here is a short account of that event.
I learned practical things from Mel as well. I was honored to have his active support for some of my campaigns. In 1995, he drove the 6 or 7 hours from Boston to Syracuse on his own dime to speak at an event in support of my campaign for mayor. I remember that when we went to a dollar store to get some things our campaign headquarter needed, I just paid at checkout as an anonymous customer. It was Mel who told the clerk that I was the Green candidate for mayor and needed her vote. Mel told me afterward to not be shy and tell everyone I encountered I was running. He was right.
Mel King was and remains an inspiration.