Kevin White (mayor)

Infobox Officeholder
name =Kevin Hagan White

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imagesize =
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caption =A statue outside Boston's Faneuil Hall honors a four-term Boston mayor Kevin White.
order =51st
office =Mayor of Boston, Massachusetts
term_start =1968
term_end =1984
predecessor =John F. Collins
successor =Raymond L. Flynn
office2 =Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth
term_start2 =1961
term_end2 =1967
predecessor2 =Joseph D. Ward
successor2 =John F. X. Davoren
birth_date =Birth date and age|1929|9|25|mf=y
birth_place =flagicon|Massachusetts Boston, Massachusetts, United States
death_date =
death_place =
nationality =
party =Democratic
spouse =
relations =
children =
residence =
alma_mater =Williams College
Boston College (law degree)
occupation =
profession =
religion =


website =
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Kevin Hagan White (born September 25, 1929) is an American politician best known as the longest-serving Mayor of Boston, a position he held from 1967 to 1983.

Early years

White was educated at Tabor Academy, Williams College (AB, 1952), Boston College Law School (LLB, 1955) and the Harvard Graduate School of Public Administration (now known as the John F. Kennedy School of Government). Prior to his term as Mayor of Boston, he served as Secretary of the Commonwealth from 1961–1967.

Mayor of Boston

White successfully ran for Mayor in 1967 on a populist platform that included support for rent control. One of his slogans was "When landlords raise rents, Kevin White raises hell." Rent control became the law in Boston in 1970. [http://tenant.net/Alerts/Guide/papers/dreier/dreier1.html] White beat Louise Day Hicks who had taken a strong anti-desegregation position as a member of the Boston School Committee. Hicks' slogan was the coded "You know where I stand." White won by approximately 12,000 votes after he was endorsed by the Boston Globe, the paper's first political endorsement in decades. Mayor White defeated Hicks by a larger margin in his bid for a second term.

Learning of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mayor White pressed WGBH-TV to televise the James Brown concert held that evening at the Boston Garden. While many cities including Washington DC, were met with rioting and numerous fires, the city of Boston was spared these, as people throughout the Metro-Boston region, tuned in to the concert.

In 1972, White made news when he was able to convince Rhode Island State Police to release The Rolling Stones from custody on a drug possession charge in order to make a concert appearance before the attendees became violent. As word of this action came out, Mayor White won overwhelming favor among young first time voters in his re-election.

Other political races

In 1970, White unsuccessfully ran for Governor of Massachusetts against Republican Frank Sargent. White's running mate was Michael Dukakis, who later challenged and defeated Sargent for the Governor's office in 1974. White's campaign for governor was interrupted for several days when he underwent emergency stomach surgery.

In 1972, he was on the verge of the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nomination. After a number of better known politicians, including Senators Ted Kennedy and Gaylord Nelson, and Governor Reubin Askew, turned down the position, White briefly became the front-runner for the post. However, when Kennedy, famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith and others in the Massachusetts delegation voiced their opposition to White's nomination, Presidential nominee Senator George McGovern decided to turn elsewhere and selected Senator Thomas Eagleton, who was later embroiled in a controversy over his failure to disclose having received electric shock therapy for depression. Ultimately, the vice presidential nominee as former Chicago School Board President and later Ambassador R. Sargent Shriver, who had married into the Kennedy family.

On November 1, 2006, a statue of White was unveiled at Boston's Faneuil Hall. The statue portrays White walking down the side walk. Behind the statue are several metal footprints along the sidewalk. With these are several quotes from White which were made during his inauguration speeches.

Boston in the 1970s

The 1970s were a turbulent time for Boston. In 1974, Judge W. Arthur Garrity found that the Boston School Committee had followed a practice of segregating the city's public schools by race, including building new schools in districts tailored to white constituents. As a remedy, Garrity ordered the city's schools desegregated, leading to a system of desegregation busing. The desegregation did not go peacefully, and violence was not uncommon. In one famous incident in 1976 during a demonstration outside Boston City Hall, a black businessman was attacked with an American flag.

White also worked for the revitalization of Boston's downtown. In 1976, he achieved perhaps his biggest success in that area with the re-opening of Quincy Market.

In the 1975 and 1979 Mayoral elections, Mayor White defeated State Senator Joe Timilty. He retired in 1983 and was succeeded by Ray Flynn.

Parodies and characters based on Kevin White

In The Kickass Press's religious satire "Sex with THE Virgin Mary" the former Mayor of Boston who appears to wish to deflower the Holy Mother and is likely to have Alzheimer's disease is believed by some to be influenced by Kevin White.ISBN 978-0-615-21231-9.

Health

In 1970, during his campaign for governor, White underwent surgery that removed two-thirds of his stomach. In 2001, the since-retired White suffered a heart attack which left him with a pacemaker. In his advanced age, he has lost hearing in his right ear and is suffering from Alzheimer's disease [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/06/20/the_loner_in_winter/] .

Quote

White made this statement in light of Boston's finances:

:"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."

Throughout the 1970s, Cleveland was the long-standing butt of jokes and by the early 1980s, city residents were getting fed up. Former Cleveland Mayor and current U.S. Senator from Ohio George Voinovich complained about White's controversial statement. He responded by saying that Boston had survived facetious remarks from a wide range of jokesters, from Mark Twain to Johnny Carson. "I am sure Cleveland will also," he said.

External links and references

* [http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/06/20/the_loner_in_winter/ "The loner in winter: former mayor Kevin White is being robbed by Alzheimer's-- but bolstered by a dear friend."] The Boston Globe, June 20, 2005, By Jack Thomas
* [http://openvault.wgbh.org/ton/MLA000823/index.html: "White speaks to residents about the opening of schools"] on the WGBH series, [http://openvault.wgbh.org/series/Ten+O%27Clock+News/ Ten O'clock News]
*Cite web|url=http://nass.org/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_download&gid=4|title=THE STATES|format=PDF|publisher=National Association of Secretaries of State|accessdate=2007-11-09