Bay State Banner June 4, 2020

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inside this week

Local electeds united in opposition to police violence pg 3

INSIDE ARTS

business news

A PANDEMIC-ERA ARTIST RESIDENCY TACKLES SOCIETAL FAULT LINES pg 12

New leadership for Nubian Square pg 11

plus CARE-oke for a cause pg 12 Zanele Muholi’s selfportraits challenge race in visual history pg 13 Vol. 55 No. 45 • Thursday, June 4, 2020 • FREE • GREATER BOSTON’S URBAN NEWS SOURCE SINCE 1965

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A new name for Dudley library Library board eschews ‘Nubian’ name By KENNEAL PATTERSON

BANNER PHOTO

Thousands of demonstrators flooded Nubian Square Friday evening.

Police, demonstrators turn violent in protests Peaceful Boston protests marred by late-night looting By YAWU MILLER At the beginning of last week, news of the May 25 Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd dominated headlines as black America came to grips with the latest in a string of video-recorded violence. By the end of the week, it was the widespread police violence against protestors, journalists and bystanders — as well as growing

accounts of rioting and looting — that captured the attention of the media. Sunday, the wave of violence hit Boston, when protestors and, by many accounts, newly arriving provocateurs, leaving a gathering at the State House fanned out into Downtown Crossing, some smashing store windows and throwing rocks and water bottles at police officers. A police car was set ablaze and some stores were looted. Police responded with tear

gas and stun grenades in some areas. The National Guard was called in by 11 p.m. as the looting extended into Newbury Street and the Copley Square area and beyond. In all, Boston police arrested 53, including one man charged with firing 10 shots at officers, 23 charged with breaking and entering, three with assault and battery on a police officer and five with

See PROTESTS, page 9

Boston Public Library trustees have voted to change the Dudley branch’s name to the “Roxbury Branch of the Boston Public Library.” Not everyone is in favor of the name change, which passed in a 7-4 vote. “Folks are stunned and upset,” said Sadiki Kambon, chair of the Nubian Square Coalition. “We intend to contest this whole process,” he told the Banner. Kambon led the movement to rename Dudley Square to Nubian Square, in honor of the ancient Nubian Empire, an African empire in the Nile Valley. He said that the library’s name should have reflected this change. The square and library were originally named after Thomas Dudley, a British Colonial official who governed the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the mid-17th century. There is no evidence that Dudley owned slaves, although many advocates claim that the governor perpetuated slavery and created laws that sanctioned slavery. Critics of the square’s name change, which city officials made following a nonbinding referendum on the 2019 ballot, countered that Nubians owned slaves, and their descendants in the Nile Valley region continue to. Kambon said that he reached out to the library system months ago and advocated for the Nubian title. When he urged the trustees to adopt this title, they

had not yet made a decision. Kambon was invited to a virtual trustee board meeting on May 26. He said that BPL President David Leonard told him that no vote would be formally taken on the name change at that time. He was told that due to the pandemic, there would be a “pause” to think through the issue.

Folks are stunned and upset. We intend to contest this whole process.” — Sadiki Kambon, chair of the Nubian Square Coalition

Nevertheless, said Kambon, trustees voted that day. Despite Kambon’s testimony, the naming branch of the trustees decided on “Roxbury” rather than “Nubian.” Kambon said that the chair of the board of trustees, Robert Gallery, sabotaged things by calling for a vote on that day and rammed the new name down advocates’ throats. There was no public forum or community vote on the name change. Evelyn Arana-Ortiz, vice chair of the BPL board of trustees, voted in favor of the name change. She said she hasn’t heard any complaints from members of the community as to the absence of a community vote. All trustee meetings are

See LIBRARY, page 2

Riots a driving force in U.S. history Bloody protests, Boston Massacre to present By BRIAN WRIGHT O’CONNOR To paraphrase H. Rap Brown, the history of police violence sparking urban unrest is “as American as cherry pie.” The radical black activist was speaking at a Washington press conference in 1967 but could have expressed the same sentiment at most any point in American history. In 1770, the killing of an

11-year-old boy by a customs officer fueled tensions leading to the Boston Massacre, with a stevedore of African and Native American descent, Crispus Attucks, becoming the first to die in the nation’s founding fight for freedom from tyranny. Not much has changed in 250 years. Cellphone videos have punctured the blue wall of denials that once shielded law enforcement from accountability, but that hasn’t stopped abuses

from occurring. Certainly not in the case of George Floyd. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, indifferent to the cries of spectators and the weakening pleas of “I can’t breathe” from Floyd himself, pressed his knee into the neck of the handcuffed victim for almost nine minutes as the cameras rolled. The brutal episode set off protests in more than 130 cities and led to the deployment of the National Guard in 13 states where

See RIOTS, page 8

BANNER PHOTO

The Dudley branch library, currently being renovated, has been renamed the Roxbury branch.


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