Thomas Irving Atkins was born March 2, 1939, in Elkhart, Indiana, and died from complications related to ALS, on June 27, 2008.
He was the first black student body president at his high school, and the first black student body president of a Big Ten school while attending Indiana University Bloomington. He and his wife had to travel to Michigan to marry, because in 1960, interracial marriage was illegal in Indiana.
Tom Atkins was a Harvard-educated lawyer elected to the Boston City Council in 1967, just as the protracted law enforcement attacks on Black communities of the late sixties began to garner attention on the national news (and which attacks continue today).
As a member of the City Council on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, Atkins met with Boston Mayor Kevin White and negotiated an agreement that a scheduled James Brown concert would not only proceed as planned, but that local public television station WGBH-TV would broadcast the concert live. Atkins' genius was his prediction that a well-run concert would keep those attending the show focused on the entertainment, and allow those without tickets the opportunity to stay at home and watch the concert, thereby keeping people occupied and safe while most major metropolitan areas exploded in riot. The concert was a success and people across the city, including my family, watched the concert on Channel 2.
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| Tom Atkins and Elvis Presley |
In January of 1971, Atkins and Elvis Presley were among a group named "1970s Ten Outstanding Young Men of America," by the US Jaycees at their annual conference in Memphis, Tennessee. Atkins told the story of meeting Elvis with a certain charm.
In the Summer of 1971, as I prepared to start high school and not yet old enough to get a work permit, I volunteered to work on Atkins' mayoral campaign, making phone calls, delivering yard signs, stuffing envelopes, and handing out leaflets. It was an exciting time, and although Boston was hardly ready for a black mayor, the campaign was well-received and Atkins placed fourth out of six.
I had the good fortune of meeting Atkins a number of times that Summer, and he once introduced me to a donor as "the guy who runs my Jamaica Plain office." I was thirteen years old and that introduction filled me with pride. During the victory party at the Bradford Hotel on election night, Atkins mingled with the crowd, and found me in my suit and tie weeping about the loss. He put his hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eye and said "We did a great thing. You did a good job. Thank you," and shook my hand.
I never saw him again after that, but later that year he became the first African American Cabinet Secretary in Massachusetts, heading up the Department of Community Development. He then became the president of the Boston NAACP and eventually that organization's general counsel.
Tom Atkins pushed white Bostonians to see their black neighbors as fellow citizens in a City that was grossly segregated and in sharp decline. Atkins refused to be hindered by the racism that drives America, and stood proudly and spoke directly whenever given the opportunity of a public forum.
Tom Atkins was an American hero.
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