Thomas A. Sears (1959)

On April 22, 2015, Thomas A. Sears, stepson of Kathryne Bieri Sears, submitted the following account of his life on Boston’s South End.

THE END OF THE LINE

Boston’s South End in the 1950’s

John McLeister and I were continuing a discussion of urban poverty following a class taught by Dr. Paul Deets, Professor of Sociology and Ethics at Boston University School of Theology. John suggested that we learn about poverty by living in a Boston slum during our last year a Boston University. I hesitated to give up the comfort, convenience, security, and fellowship of the dorm. But I agreed. We hoped that in addition to learning first-hand about poverty we would have a ministry of presence.

We arrived early for the fall 1958 semester to look for a room in a “flop house.” We found a sleeping room with a kitchenette at 11 Dwight Street in Boston’s South End (not to be confused with South Boston). The South End in the 1950’s was the quintessence of an urban slum. It was a neighborhood of extreme population density, severe poverty, high unemployment, and rampant crime.

It was not always such. Between Boston and Roxbury was an isthmus known as “The Neck” joining Boston (the head) with The Commonwealth (the body.) An area on both sides of the isthmus was filled from the Back Bay and South Bay creating the new South End in the 1840’s.   Luxury townhouses were built for the new wealthy industrialists and bankers. The earliest houses built on the new land were brick, as on Dwight Street, but on the next block the architecture changed to the attractive bow front brownstones. The South End was an elite section in mid nineteenth century Boston, second only to Beacon Hill.

The neighborhood began to go down-hill with the 1873 depression where many mortgages were foreclosed.   The houses changed hands in waves of depressions, others moving to the new, more opulent Back Bay, and still others fled from the hideous elevated train constructed along Washington Street in the 1890’s. Most were first converted to middle class apartments, then to working class one room apartments with kitchenettes, and finally to sleeping rooms. By mid twentieth century only a few single family homes remained.

The 1950 Census counted over 57,000 people living in the South End, but censuses fail to count many in such neighborhoods. With an adjustment for the undercount, the population density was over 60,000 per square mile living in what had been four story single family dwellings. The per capita income was the lowest in the city, and the unemployment rate was over 50%.

Eleven Dwight Street was a typical building. Originally the kitchen had been located in the basement. This space was now a one room apartment with a shared toilet and sink. An elderly couple who were both shut-ins lived here. The building caretaker delivered groceries for them once a week. The first floor formal parlor was an apartment. Another elderly couple lived here. When I would see them, they usually would not speak nor make eye contact. The building caretaker speculated that they had been people of means who had lost everything and were ashamed and afraid of their present circumstances. The front of the first floor had been a large entry room and library. Here were two small sleeping rooms. One was just large enough for a three-quarters bed, a chest of draws and a chair. This room was rented by the month to one to three people who shared the bed. The other room had an army bunk, a chest of draws, a commode and a chair. In this small space, lived a very sick old man.

There were two, one room apartments on the second floor. John and I had the one on the back of the building which had been the dining room.   A middle-aged man lived in the front apartment or the former living room. He had a full time unskilled job.   His life consisted of working during the day, coming home, fixing supper, and listening to a ball game on the radio. The third and fourth floors were divided into eight small sleeping rooms. The building bathroom, shared by as many as sixteen people, was on the third floor. In the sleeping rooms lived who were maids, two who were chronically sick (one with active tuberculosis), two disabled, one mentally ill, and three who worked when they could find a short term job and then were unemployed until they could find a new job. Looking for work was a very discouraging task for the unskilled because for every job that opened, half of the South End labor force was trying to get that one job!  Those we lived with were at the end of the line.

Our building was typical in representing the old, the sick, the disabled, the working poor, and those with few labor skills. But there were others living in the South End. There were children living on Dwight Street. There were criminals. There were mom and pa store front businesses.   Across the alley was a skilled working class family where four generations had been born in the same house.

Absent from our neighborhood was the welfare queen. She must have lived in a better neighborhood! We all know that there are those who are lazy and would rather live on welfare than work. We also know that there are doctors who charge Medicaid for procedures not performed, businessmen who fraudulently receive government payments, defense contractors overcharging, and bankers using government bailouts to provide huge bonuses for themselves. But those engaged in these practices we know do not represent all doctors, businessmen and bankers. Why do we believe the Welfare Queen represents all poor people? Those who can work represent a small percentage of the poor. A far bigger problem than the Welfare Queen myth is that for the working poor there are not enough jobs, and for those who are working, they often have to receive welfare to provide the necessities of life including health care.

John and I moved into a culture and physical surroundings totally unfamiliar to our middle class lives. We had to very rapidly develop new coping skills. The first problem we faced was our room was infested with various bugs including personal livestock, commonly known as bed bugs and lice! Fortunately, our building caretaker was an expert dealing with bugs. He fumigated our room, killing all the bugs without making us sick!

Our room looked out onto Cat Alley. Many who lived in the South End did not know where Dwight Street was, but it seemed everyone knew about Cat Alley. Two mentally ill women fed the cats. Now I am not implying one has to be mentally ill to feed cats, but these ladies were. One would come in the morning and the other in the afternoon. When they came, cats by the hundreds came out of the woodwork filling the alley for twenty yards or more. The ladies fed the cats, but the homeless, alcoholics and drug addicts, when they could, would catch a cat and sell it to a medical school. The going price was five dollars per cat. As a program of cat population control, it was a failure.

The good news of living on Cat Ally was mice, rats and other rodents did not have a chance. The bad news was the feline mating ritual is loud and very distressing to humans especially when one is trying to sleep. If the cat mating ritual is as painful as it sounds, I would think cats would be an endangered species. One night when the ritual was especially annoying, John threw a bucket of water out the window at the cats. They scattered but were back in a few minutes. I suggested we needed to use our superior intelligence. The next night I got a bucket. John threw his bucket of water first and when I saw which way they were going I threw mine. After a few direct hits, the cats avoided our backyard and fence, but would station themselves six inches out of our range and carry on. When we threw water, they would watch motionlessly and with contempt. We had to admit defeat. It seems sex, even with humans, often triumphs over intelligence!

Personal hygiene presented challenges. The strong smell of urine in the hall near the trash barrels was offensive. I wondered how we could house break some of the residents. Then we found the century old toilet with the water tank near the ceiling was usually plugged and sometimes overflowing. The landlord “could not afford a plumber.” I asked if I could deduct the cost of a repair kit from my rent. He still could not afford it. John and I bought the repair kit for less than five dollars! The caretaker and I got the toilet working like new (which was not all that good.) The residents with a working toilet took pride in keeping it unplugged. The urine smell in the hall dissipated in a few weeks. The problem was caused not by the renters but by the greed of the landlord!

Bathing also was a problem. John was a purist and insisted on bathing in our bathroom! He would take scouring powder and bleach to clean the bathtub before bathing every Saturday night. I could not bring myself to bath in the room with the fore mentioned problem. I first went to the public shower on Dover Street used by most in our neighborhood. The public shower was only slightly better. I cheated by taking my showers at the Theology Dorm for the rest of the year. (I hope in making this confession the Dean will not bill me!)

A second area where we cheated was buying our groceries. Food was very expensive in the South End. We went to a national chain store in Roxbury. Most people living in the South
End could not take advantage of these luxuries. The poor had to pay far higher prices in all their living expenses for what they received than the Middle Class.

In addition to coping with living in a tenement house, we had to take a crash course in street smarts. The most important lesson was to be able to distinguish between the trouble makers and the good people. With the former, one did not make eye contact or listen to their call. Others one would greet with a smile and if time permitted stop for a short conversation. Soon I discovered that a sixth sense had developed whereby I could spot the trouble makers. This instinct developed to where I could tell those who must always be avoided and those I could stop and talk with on my terms and time. Usually the conversations were superficial, but once in a while they were meaningful.

With this sixth sense I found the streets to be safe at any hour in spite of the high crime rate. We were before the gun violence epidemic, gang warfare, drive-by shootings, and random assassinations. The highest murder rate in New England was in the South End, but it was confined to domestic violence, friends drinking too much in bars, organized crime assassinations, and bodies dropped off in the South End to avoid prosecution. Street crime was petty crime such as pick-pockets or prostitution. One was safe simply by avoiding the trouble makers.

Far more dangerous for the citizens than the trouble makers or organized crime were the police. The police in the South End, unlike in middle class neighborhoods, acted as an army of occupation.   They protected organized crime rather than the citizens. They kept the peace through repression.   John and I witnessed a burglar in our neighbor’s house across the alley. Our neighbor tackled him, but he broke loose. He ran down three floors of fire-escape by taking three or four steps at a time, jumped over a six foot fence, and ran down the alley like a track star. We all knew he was a young white man. Thirty minutes later the police arrested a black man who had been in a drunken stupor on Berkeley Street for over a week. The man could not even stand when arrested. We went to the public defender, the prosecutor, and the judge to no avail. A man physically incapable of committing the crime was sent to prison.

A second lesson regarding the police came in attempting to correct a public nuisance. Citizens transferred from the Tremont streetcar to crosstown buses at Mass Av. A few storefronts down Tremont Street was a bar which was the headquarters for organized crime’s call girl operation. The girls were harassing and bulling the people waiting for their bus or streetcar. John and I asked the precinct captain if the police could stop the bullying. We made it clear we were not complaining about vice but only the harassment. He insisted that there was no vice in the South End so we must be mistaken. I looked out his window and saw the large neon sign for the illegal numbers lottery, two prostitutes, and their pimp! He told us he would have a raid on the bar to prove to us we were mistaken.

I received a telephone call after 9:00 pm a couple weeks later.   It was a friend who lived across from the bar. “Get over here something is going to happen,” he said. “All the girls got in limos and drove off. There is not a prostitute in sight!” I arrived at the bar during the police raid. I went in. The officer in charge was on the telephone. I noticed he had all the lines tied up so there would be no incoming calls. The bar was a friendly neighborhood establishment, like Cheers on TV where “everyone knows your name.” Fifteen minutes after the raid everything was back to normal!

My friend wondered if organized crime would help. He went to the numbers racket office, and to his surprise was able to talk with the head of the syndicate in the South End.   After explaining what we wanted, the head of organized crime said, “That seems reasonable. After all, we want to have good relations with our customers. I’ll see what I can do.” The next day not only had the harassment stopped, but the girls would not go near the streetcar or bus stops.

I still had not learned my lesson about police as an army of occupation. One late afternoon I was talking on a street corner with six or eight black and Hispanic junior high boys. An eight foot fence with barbed wire on top had been constructed around the school playground.   We were talking about how we could find a new place to play ball.   Suddenly, a police paddy wagon screeched to a stop. Around six officers came running toward us. The boys vanished. I began to explain to the first officer what we were doing, thinking the police might even be interested in helping. An officer from behind hit me over the head with his Billy club. I regained consciousness in the drunk tank. I was taken to a detective’s office and charged with attempting to incite a riot, interfering with office acts, and resisting arrest. I was released after promising to appear at my court hearing.

I told the public defender the next day what happened. He asked one question, “Did you sign anything or was it a verbal promise?” I answered, “Verbal.” He then said, “I doubt if there is any record of what happened. When they found out who you were, they did not want to take it to court. After all, you might have a couple Boston University law professors representing you! But I’ll check on it.” The next day he called. “I checked the record today. There is nothing there. But if you do get a letter from the court, I’ll represent you.” I thanked him, but I am still waiting for my court hearing!    I am amazed by the patience and endurance of those living in similar urban areas. It takes an extremely grievous abuse of power before people who have no voice take to the streets in nonviolent or violent demonstrations.

The difficulty of the living conditions are pale compared with the friendships we made. Peter was the bitter old man living in a small sleeping room on the first floor. He was too sick to leave his room. He had no radio and did not read. All he could do was sleep and watch Dwight Street pass by. The building caretaker brought a meal and emptied the commode pot once a day. I would stop by regularly to talk with him. He was alienated from his family. When I would ask something about the family, he would swear profusely and say, “I don’t even want to think about those son of bitches.” He had worked in the shop for over thirty years for the same company with an excellent work record. A few months before retirement there was a fire in the subway. He arrived at work late and was fired. He lost his pension and health benefits! I expressed my outrage, and he matter-of-factly said, “It happened to most of us.” He was living on his minimum social security benefit, and could not afford to see a doctor. He was waiting for death to free him from this life.

Jack lived on the third floor. He was a single, healthy middle- aged man with low normal intelligence. He worked as an unskilled laborer at short term jobs followed by periods of unemployment. One evening there was a loud knock at the door. It was Jack who had to share his excitement with us that he had a new job. He told about the job and how much it meant to him. He then said, “I hope this job lasts. It would be nice to work here until I could retire.” John and I knew it would not last, but we did not take away his hope.

Jack often made unwise decisions. (But I have observed that those far wiser and wealthier have had the same problem.) We tried to help him make better decisions. Once he stopped by with his six-pack and numbers tickets. He admitted he could not afford what he had bought but then said, “A couple beers in the evening is about the only pleasure I have in life. I believe someday my number will win and then I can live in a good neighborhood.” We could not take away that simple pleasure and hope.

Maria was the Dwight Street prostitute. I must be perfectly clear that my relationship with Maria was always based on my profession and not hers. We met Maria when her four year old son fell out the window. We took Maria and her two sons to the hospital. John and I became the unofficial big bothers to the two boys. Maria shared her story with me. Her father raped her the first time when she was twelve. Her uncle joined when she was fourteen. She found herself pregnant with her uncle’s child when she was sixteen. Her family called her a slut who had dishonored the family. They kicked her out saying that they never wanted to see her again. What does a sixteen year old pregnant girl, who was also kicked out of school, do? She lied about her age and got a job as a maid at a cheap motel. She lost the job shortly before her son was born. After the birth, she could not find work. The rent was due. Terrified of being on the street with a baby, the night before she was to be evicted she sold her body for the first time. Considering the circumstances of her life, we found her to be a good mother to the boys.

I have often thought that if Maria were my sister, raised by my father, the chances of her being a prostitute would be next to zero. She would have become a teacher or professor, a nurse or doctor, a minister or social worker, maybe a lawyer or business woman, but not a prostitute! Jack explained his condition as “being down on my luck.” Maria’s luck ran out the day she was born by being the daughter of her father!

The living conditions, burdens of our friends, and systemic injustice of economic, political and social institutions began to take its toll. John returned from paying the rent one day, slammed the door, grabbed the garbage, and airmailed it out the window! He exclaimed, “He raised the rent again!” I took out my anger verbally. I probably used some theological words out of proper context. After we had vented our rage, we sat down. I said, “Look at what has happen to us. We can leave anytime we want. We have jobs waiting for us, which even though they are the poorest paying of all professional jobs, will still pay more than our friends will ever make. Last time the rent was raised two men had to share one room and a bed and two women had to double up. Now one or two will have to live on the street! All because of greed! How can they cope?” The answer was many could not!

For most who lived in the South End in the 1950’s, it was the end of the line. But it was also the end of the line for the South End. We knew the South End was dying. The 1960 census indicated that the population had declined by 44%. I returned to Boston in the late 1960’s and discovered the South End was a ghost town. The buildings had been abandoned. The only people I saw were a few homeless who had broken into the buildings and were living without utilities. I wondered what had become of those we had known.

The official publications suggest that the people moved out of the South End to escape the poverty and crime. But the people moved to Roxbury and other areas of poverty and crime. A better explanation must be found for the demise of the South End I had known. The landlords for decades had not maintained the buildings nor paid taxes. They had extracted the maximum profit. The landlord of 11 Dwight Street who would not pay five dollars to fix a toilet would not put in a new heating system when the old boiler gave out the year after we lived there. He and the other landlords abandoned the buildings when fire or major expense made the buildings uninhabitable. The people were forced to move. The city became the new owners. It was then up to the city to determine what would happen to the South End.

We did not have to evaluate our contextual experiment in the 1950’s, but today an evaluation is mandatory. My experience in the South End changed my life and contributed to who I am. It was a time I remember with thankfulness. I learned the wisdom of the Native American proverb, “Do not judge another until you have walked in their moccasins.” When I walk in another’s shoes my judgment usually turns to compassion.

I learned also that the poor and marginalized share with me a common humanity. As a Christian I must believe that God does not show any partiality but all are children of God. Therefore, I must treat, even the most obnoxious, with respect and dignity.

Thirdly, the conventional wisdom regarding poverty and especially the rhetoric of politicians does not ring true with my experience. The carefully woven myth about poverty appears to me to blame the victim, justify our non-involvement, and maintain the advantage of those with privilege.

Based upon my experience living with the poor and my study of the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian writings, and the Koran which has assistance to the poor one of the five pillars of the faith, I have come to believe the most important evaluation of a society is not based upon how well the rich, powerful, and privileged are doing, for they always do well. But it will be based upon how intelligently, how compassionately, and how justly the society deals with the poor, the marginalized, the powerless, and the outcasts.

It is easy to evaluate my personal experience, but it is much harder to evaluate a ministry of presence. All I can do is point to the people’s response when it became known we were leaving. Most of the people living at 11 Dwight Street dropped by to thank us for living with them and wished us “good luck.” Even the couple who never would speak thanked us. A homeless man spent several nights a week during the winter sleeping in our bathtub. He appeared again. I woke him and told him it was time to move on. He said, “Most people when they kick me out are mean. It makes me feel bad. But you will even talk with me and when you say, ‘I hope your day goes ok,’ it makes me feel good. I believe those day do go better. Thanks and good Luck.” Peter in his own bitter way said all he could. “Tom, I’m mad at you. You’re leaving me and now I don’t have a single friend to talk with. Anyway, good luck.”

People on the street stopped to thank us. Some we did not recognize. One women came out of a building on the other side of the street. She came over and thanked me said, “I always like to see you and your friend come home. You give me hope.”

John became the associate pastor of First Methodist Church, Johnstown, Pennsylvania. One day a homeless man came, and when he saw John he exclaimed, “John, John McLeister!” He ran over and hugged John. It was Jack. The two went to John’s office and talked. 11 Dwight Street had been abandoned. He had given up on finding work in Boston and was riding the rails in boxcars. When the train stopped, he would go to a church hoping to get something to eat and help in getting a job. Before he left he said, “It sure is good to see you again.”

Word got out where John was. From time to time men like Jack from the South End would drop in to see John. To our amazement not one of these men asked for assistance or help of any kind. They just wanted to see one they considered their friend.

I was packing to return to Iowa. I was struggling to get a heavy box of books in the back seat of my Volkswagen. I backed out and stood up. Maria was standing next to me. She thanked me for what we had done for her boys. “But especially,” she said, “I want to thank you for what you have done for me. You are the first men in my life that have not just wanted to get their hands on my body. But you treated me with respect as if I were a good woman. I will never forget that.” She gave me a hug, said “Thanks”, kissed me, and with tears in her eyes hurried away. With a prayer for her in my heart, I watched a friend walk down the street.