Black Mayoral Candidate King Stresses Hub's Race Problem

To Boston mayoral candidate Melvin H. King, the only Black candidate in an expected field of six challengers to in cumbent Kevin H. White, the issue of race is integral to his campaign and to Hub politics as a whole.

"There are significant numbers of people who are going to vote on the basis of their racism and we're talking about people who are white," King said in an interview yesterday at MIT, where he is an adjunct professor and director of the Community Fellows Program.

But King added that he can win this November because "there are people who will rise above their feelings and vote in their self-interest."

Machiners

King's fate against the White political machine is of added interest to observers following Black congressman Harold Washington's Chicago Democratic primary victory last month in what was considered by many to be the death knell for Chicago's political machine.

In fact, King has asked Washington and Edward Gardner--who engineered a successful minority voter registration drive in Chicago--to come to Boston for the same purpose. It is estimated that less than 50 percent of Boston Blacks are currently registered.

But King refused yesterday to draw a parallel between the two campaigns, saying only that "it's obvious that no one is going to be elected if they don't have the support of the Black community." That community constitutes approximately one-fifth of Boston's population.

King stressed the race issue particularly in regard to White, whom he accuses of dividing the city along racial lines. "Racism is real in Boston," King said. "If you were Black and got jumped in Bunker Hill you would feel that Boston is racist. It's important for whites to realize that racism affects whites as well as Blacks."

Though called too radical to win by many political observers King showed he could whip up popular support when he placed third in the 1979 open primary--behind White and Joseph F. Timility, who is not running this year--and ahead of David I. Finnegan.

King refused to discuss his opponents--Finnegan and City Councilor Raymond L. Flynn are considered to be White's prime challengers--and stressed instead the problems he said are crippling the city: lack of jobs and housing, crime, educational problems, racism, and unequal distribution of city funds.

His platform includes decentralizing City government, placing more power in the hands of district area boards and reorganizing the City Council, and balancing the distribution of city resources between the neighborhoods and the downtown area. "So far the resources have all gone to developing the Boston skyline," he said, adding. "The city is only as good as its poorest neighborhood, only as good as its ability to have people healthy."