South Boston Alive

Ian Boyd

The heart of South Boston goes deeper than any physical characteristic you could find on a map. It lies in the people, their history, and their relations to the physical locations of the neighborhood. While Google Maps and Street View allow you to scour every inch of street from every imaginable angle, this is only a shallow visual facade of a representation of South Boston. The true nature of the neighborhood emerges upon talking to the residents. South Boston is defined by the people who live in it, the history they remember, and what every place in South Boston means to them.

The largest park of the neighborhood is called Independence Square. However, in keeping with the elusive nature of the area, it is known by a different name, "M Street Park," to the locals. Further investigation reveals even more that the encyclopedia does not. For example, a South Boston resident named James admitted in an interview that he was unaware that the Vietnam Memorial housed in M Street Park was the first in the entire nation. Yet, James went on to divulge information not found in official places. He explains, "After dark kids sneak into the park to do drugs and get themselves into trouble." James continues to analyze this underground knowledge, stating that "the Mafia was notorious in these parts, and even though Whitey Bulger isn't around heading the Winter Hill Gang anymore, kids still take after him and are swayed to the criminal lifestyle." The Vietnam Memorial has its own significance, but it takes on new meanings when it becomes the home environment of others.

Encyclopedic and historically established knowledge about an area does not necessarily reflect the mental outlooks of the people living there. James is not alone in his ignorance regarding the Vietnam Memorial. Five out of five residents interviewed did not realize that it had been the first in the nation. Among most of the South Boston population, the park and the memorial take on a different meaning. James is also not alone in his awareness of the illicit activity that occurs in the park after dark. Two other residents who were, like James, walking through the M Street Park, confirmed that such activitiy takes place. The three locals independently view the park as, to quote James, "pot-smoker's city." The fallacy of equating scholarly knowledge of an area with the knowledge of the residents is also present in the historical context.

The residents of South Boston view M Street Park as a night time drug area more predominantly than as the site of the first Vietnam War Memorial in America. A textbook or historical summary of South Boston would completely reverse the importance of those facts, not even mentioning the night time drug use. The historical significance of an event can likewise not reflect the mental perspective of the people living in that time. Modern historians can look at an event like the American Revolution or the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand with the scholarly knowledge of their after effects and lasting significance. A person witnessing the American Revolution or the assassination of Ferdinand would not be considering their potential long lasting impact. It is necessary to take into account the actual knowledge and perspective of the people in question, compared to the overarching scholarly analysis of their time period and area.

Broad historical details can be accurate and insightful in certain cases. South Boston has always been an Irish-Catholic neighborhood. All of the politicians from South Boston are Irish-Catholic, and almost all of the churches are as well. A resident named Michael was interviewed while leaving an Irish-Catholic church. He remarked, "Yea, I'm Irish-Catholic, so is my family, and so's the whole f***ing block." Michael was asked in a follow up question what effect being Irish-Catholic had on the use of profanity. He responded, "Christ, Whitey Bulger was raised Irish Catholic, and see where it got him. Being Catholic doesn't make you a saint." While the textbook and historical fact is accurate, there is more to the story. The majority of the population does identify as Irish-Catholic, but there are idiosyncrasies to the religion of a specific area. The people and environment of South Boston influence the meaning of being Irish Catholic in a different way then other people and places do. A single sentence claiming it is an Irish-Catholic neighborhood does not do these individual characteristics justice.

The character of South Boston emerges in the lives of the residents. The way they interact with and experience their neighborhood defines the area in its most humanized form. Interviewing live, local residents is a luxury historians cannot afford, and this is why it is so difficult to understand what ancient events or buildings mean to people at the time. We could look at ruins of South Boston and date the Vietnam Memorial as the first in the nation, and tally up almost all of the churches as Irish-Catholic, but the human essence of those details would be lost without the living memories and interpretations from the local residents. Fortunately we can collect their vivid stories before they, and even South Boston, become history.