I think about Boston as the city of contradictions.

On the one hand, it has this wonderful history as home to the radical abolition movement where there were key figures like William Cooper Nell and William Lloyd Garrison and Mariah Stewart, right?

Advocating for Black civil rights and Black freedom.

And on the other hand, Boston was home to the doctrine of separate but equal.

What some people don't realize is that the very doctrine comes from the Roberts versus City of Boston's equal school rights case where the judge said there was a school for Black children, though it was separate, it was equal.

And so for me, Boston has always had to sort of deal with these tensions.

- You got Harvard, you have MIT, you know, BU, BC, you know, some of the finest universities on the planet, but then our public school systems in shambles.

Like how does that, that shows you right there the split.

Boston kinda has a, it has this very segregated city, the Irish were here there, but it did not have, at least for African Americans, from my perspective, we always felt like, many felt like we were not wanted here, it was a cold city.

For me, I always thought that the understanding of Boston, its place in the country and the history, we have to get off of the Freedom Trail, we gotta go beyond the Freedom Trail.

We have to understand what took place.

See, if you're a Black kid growing up in Boston, you read about John Adams and Paul Revere, that's all taking place, the Constitution, all that that's taking place somewhere else, and they're all white folks.

You don't hear the history of the African Meeting House, you don't hear about the intellectual development on Beacon Hill.

You don't hear about people like William Trotter, Prince Hall and people like that.

You don't understand, for example, you don't understand that the Black Panthers created the first public breakfast program in the country here.

And if the people can get out and kids can walk around the streets of Boston and say, "This is the history, this is my neighborhood and I'm part of this history."

It's not just the Black history, it's American history.

And I think that's the understanding that we need to have.