The Mayor’s Office in Boston had already lost the trust of black Boston by April 1968. After years and years of trying to get black representation in any way possible they’d finally succeeded in getting Tom Atkins elected to the Boston City Council. Atkins also served as the Executive Director of the Boston NAACP whose headquarters were located in Boston’s South End/Lower Roxbury neighborhood. He often served as the community’s mouthpiece and advocate when dealing with the Mayor who often displayed that he was out of touch with the immediate or growing concerns of Boston’s Black and Latino population.
Boston’s prevailing urban radio station was WILD 1090 AM featuring renowned DJ Jimmy “Early” Byrd who served as the voice of the community. He made the call to City Hall to inform Tom Atkins that new Mayor Kevin White was panicking in the face of potential riots that could result if crowds traveled from Boston’s Black neighborhoods to the North End–where Boston Garden was located–to see James Brown. Mind you, Kevin White hadn’t the foggiest idea who James Brown was and he had NO idea his fanbase extended past just the Black denizens of Boston.
Fact of the matter was, James Brown had just been recorded live in concert in New York that previous month in preparation for an hour-long TV special to air early that summer called Man To Man. In actuality, James Brown had fans in Boston spread throughout most of the 21 neighborhoods of various backgrounds and ethnicities. All that was on Mayor White’s mind were the findings from the recently released Kerner Report outlining what led up to the riots that broke out across the country between 1965 and 1967. He was so singleminded and determined to prevent a large-scale riot from happening in Boston that he wasn’t thinking clearly.
Atkins and Byrd agreed that canceling the concert would be disastrous and only further strain Black Boston’s relationship with the Mayor’s Office so Atkins agreed to try to convince the Mayor that not allowing James Brown to perform would be a terrible idea. Kevin White and Tom Atkins went back and forth debating the pros and cons of allowing the concert to proceed as scheduled before the Mayor finally relented. Even as the concert was to continue, the Mayor panicked yet again…
In brainstorming sessions to figure out a way to keep the city from going up, the idea was posited that the concert should be broadcast live on local television to keep people off the streets in the South End and Roxbury. The task was placed squarely on the shoulders of the local PBS station WGBH. Just one problem: they had zero experience in broadcasting live a concert of that manner or magnitude–and they were asked to do something they’d never done before on short notice and under considerable pressure.