July/August 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

The Best Place in the World

Michael Patrick MacDonald, All Souls: A Family Story from Southie. Boston, Beacon Press, 1999

"Southie" is South Boston, MA. Southie was the home of the 1974 busing riots, organized crime leader Whitey Bulger, and much of Boston's working class Irish community.

In All Souls: A Family Story from Southie the author Michael Patrick MacDonald walks through his own past. "Southie is the best place in the world" were his mother's own words before she lost children to the Southie streets. Old Colony in Southie was the Irish projects. If you weren't Irish you still claimed to be Irish. They were very proud but very blind to the poverty and violence happening around them--ignoring these things in hopes that by pretending that they weren't there they could make them just disappear. Even though the Jackie O'Brien Funeral Parlor was very familiar with youth who died from drugs and violence, the people of Southie kept on believing that those things did not happen in their proud Irish community. They "knew" that those were the Black problems of Roxbury. They also had someone to tell them that Southie was great and assure them that they had no problems and no worries. Lead gangster Whitey Bulger ran the streets of Southie claiming to keep them safe from those "black Roxbury problems."

Yet even at a young age, MacDonald realized that those problems were not just in Roxbury. With the deaths of four of his siblings (all before the age of 25), and many others he knew, he recognized that Southie had its own problems. The book shows that the biggest problem that the community in Southie had was its ignorance of what happened around them. Everyone felt safe there and even the mothers who lost their children to drugs, violence, and poverty still thought that Southie was the best place to live.

The 1974 anti-busing riots brought an even darker veil along to shade the people's eyes. The fact that Southie believed that the blacks of Roxbury would bring drugs, violence, and poverty to their proud and "perfect" world, created a surge of racism, violence, and death. Even though MacDonald "Felt a part of it all" and even threw a rock at one of the buses, this demonstration was one of the events that shaped his life. He learned to recognize how effectively the busing plan had pitted two of Boston's poorest communities against each other. At the time he did not see that simply because he was too young, but the older community didn't see it because their pride had robbed them of their common sense.

I live in Brockton and it is far from peaceful. Every night you can hear sirens and gun shots--and yet when I stayed in Southie for a week and a half, I began to think that my town was OK. I was staying in the upper end of Southie and it was really nice there. One day my boyfriend told me we were going to the "Lower End" and his friend, who is African American, was going with us (we are both white). I thought nothing of it and so I followed them. About halfway through our walk he told me, "Don't look at anyone, don't say anything, and ignore whatever you hear." I must have looked confused because he started to explain. He told me plain and simple, "we are with a Black kid in the Lower End. We are going to my friend's house and then we are getting the hell out."

He told me that they were very racist. I was scared at first because I had heard other stories but when I thought more about it I knew I could deal with whatever was said. I didn't need them to warn me about Southie's racism because it was the same racism that lived in my own city. Racism is every where and it is a reality in our times.

MacDonald wrote this book because he want to voice the fact that Southie needed help. The people of Southie were voiceless. If they said too much they would either be threatened or killed by the gangsters for being snitches or they would be shamed into believing that they had lost some of their very important Irish pride. MacDonald felt the need to show people the other side of South Boston, in hopes that it would be a lesson for all cities and communities dealing with racial problems. All Souls is a scary look into a poverty-stricken world. Until this story, what happened inside the walls of Old Colony stayed inside to prevent outsiders from looking down upon Southie. Unfortunately this also prevented outsiders from doing what they could to help--and prevented insiders from demanding needed resources and fair treatment from their city. MacDonald says, "For me the urgency of this book was emphasized by the town's recent suicides, when hundreds of teenagers attempted suicide, and six young people who saw no other 'way out' killed themselves, leaving a void in the lives of friends and neighbors..." This book is written to push the Southie people into realizing that there are problems but those problems are not beyond the grasp of change.

The book starts and ends with MacDonald at a prayer vigil for all souls lost in the violent, poverty stricken and drug-laden streets of South Boston. Michael Patrick MacDonald's story, which is sure to grab you by the heart and hold on for a very long time, breaks the stereotype that poverty, violence and drugs are problems that are only part of black communities. All Souls is an amazing story of how one can grow up in a sad and violent place and yet still grow to be a strong, and good person. It is a wonderful book to read and you will be amazed at how well MacDonald took all the negative things he learned in life and turned them in to positive lessons for himself and anyone who reads this awesome book.

--Brianne Slauenwhite was a Peacework intern this spring, and graduated with the class of 2002 from the Champion Charter School in Brockton, Mass.

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