MEL KING was remembered Tuesday as a champion for justice who had a global vision of a better world that was shaped profoundly by the very local wrongs he saw people face in the South End neighborhood of Boston where he was born and lived almost all of his 94 years.
Perhaps the most influential Black leader in Boston over the last 50 years, King made a mark as a community organizer and housing activist, teacher and mentor to young people, poet and political leader. The many roles he played were reflected in the range of speakers at King’s funeral at Union United Methodist Church, as a crowd of some 1,000 heard from young people, a leader from the arts, and political figures – along with members of King’s family.
In a service that had interludes of jazz, West African drummers, church spirituals, and civil rights anthems, King was honored as now part of the pantheon of departed Black leaders of Boston and beyond.
The funeral drew a long list of prominent public officials, including Gov. Maura Healey, US Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, Attorney General Andrea Campbell, and US Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
Also attending were former governor Deval Patrick and former Boston mayor Ray Flynn.
While his contributions to the city were legion, King’s place in its history was sealed by his 1983 run for mayor, when he became the first Black candidate to win a spot in the final election for the city’s top job. He lost to Flynn in a campaign heralded as a turning point in a city that had been riven by racial tension.
“Mel King didn’t just build up our city, he knit it together,” said Wu, one of many speakers at the service, which ran for nearly four hours.
Wu declared Tuesday a “day of remembrance” in Boston in honor of King, who died on March 28.
The first woman and first person of color elected Boston mayor, Wu drew a connection between the path King blazed and her election. “The legacy of Mel King will stretch far beyond one day of remembrance. Mel’s legacy is intertwined in the leadership of every sector and institution in this city,” Wu said to those gathered at the South End church, adding that she “would not be here without Mel King.”
Pressley said King was a forceful leader without airs. “At his core, Mel King was a humble and generous humanist,” she said. At the same time, she said, “Mel was an architect, a master builder.” Pressley said he was “always challenging and creating a new frame, writing a new blueprint.”
Gov. Maura Healey said King, who also served a decade as a state representative, will “be remembered as the community remembers him: bold, brilliant, unapologetic, rooted in service, dedicated to doing what was right, driven above all by love.”
Former state representative Byron Rushing, who succeeded King in the Massachusetts House and delivered the eulogy, emphasized his work on behalf of all those facing subjugation, an impulse at the heart of the multicultural “Rainbow Coalition” King founded.
“When we commemorate Melvin King, we commemorate more than people of African descent,” said Rushing. “We commemorate all people, all human beings who have struggled for justice and freedom and peace in the Babylons of oppression and slavery and violence, in our land and throughout the world.”
Rushing said King’s views and passion for justice were formed early by the demolition of the corner of the South End where he grew up. King’s family was among those displaced in the 1950s by the razing of an area known as the New York Streets neighborhood.
“This vibrant, multiethnic neighborhood of tenement houses and mom-and-pop shops fell victim to what would come to be called urban renewal,” said Rushing. “Mel never forgot,” he said, and it “informed and developed his ethics and his politics.”
King went on to lead a successful fight years later to have affordable housing built on another contested South End parcel – an apartment building known today as Tent City because he and other activists pitched tents on the site to forcefully push their cause.
King was an adjunct professor for 25 years at MIT, where he developed a community fellows program in urban planning. But he was equally passionate about working with young people from the South End and other Boston neighborhoods.
“He listened to us and he validated us as youth when no one else would,” said Naeem Wilson, who was part of a youth mentoring and leadership program focused on technology and arts that King helped run.
“He made me feel welcome from the very moment I walked in,” said Trinity Merren, another participant in the Learn2Teach program. “I had a lot more mess-ups than successes,” she said. “He told me it’s OK to mess up. You have to fall before you rise.”
Wu said King’s role in making possible her rise to the mayor’s office went beyond the barrier-breaking example he set in the political world. She credited him on a personal level with solidifying her commitment to the city when she attended one of his famous weekend brunches, which were open to all at his South End home.
A newcomer to the neighborhood at the time, Wu was raising her younger sisters and caring for their mother, who suffered from mental health issues, “and wondering, where do we belong?” she said. “Over those little fruit cups, I found myself taking in a big helping of community, of belonging, of connection, of love,” she said. “And I walked out of there feeling, for the first time in this city, that maybe my family and I could belong.”
King saw the injustice of urban renewal projects like the one that displaced his family long before a broader consensus formed on the damage done by forcing people to abandon entire neighborhoods. But Rushing challenged the idea that King, also an early backer of gay rights and other positions before they were widely embraced, was too far out in front on the issue.
“When we remember Mel, we need to understand that Mel was not ahead of his time. Mel was on time. He was only working in a city where most of the leadership was behind the time,” Rushing said.
Continuing King’s work now, Rushing said, involves embracing the idea of 19th century Boston theologian Theodore Parker, who first framed the idea, later adapted by Martin Luther King, that the “arc” of the moral universe is long but it “bends toward justice.”
“But Mel knew, you know, you need to never forget that it does not bend by itself,” Rushing said. “It does not bend toward justice without us.”