Banned in Boston?

A rumor that the city's housing authority targeted shamrocks as hate symbols just wouldn't die in embattled Southie.

By Kenneth Rapoza

Mar 17, 2000 | It all started, as ethnic misunderstandings have been known to do, with diversity training.

Late last summer, the Boston Housing Authority gathered residents and staff at a voluntary diversity meeting, where the talk turned to the power of ethnic symbols. Someone suggested that shamrocks, the Hallmark-approved symbol of Irish pride, might be perceived negatively by the non-Irish living in Boston's housing projects. Soon afterward, trans-Atlantic hell broke loose.

A column in the South Boston Tribune reported that local residents who'd attended the workshop were "insulted" by the notion that shamrocks could be hate symbols, and alleged the BHA was telling residents to take down shamrocks displayed on their apartment door and windows. Columnist John Ciccone called the diversity training "another way of saying brainwashing." Readers began debating the supposed shamrock ban in letters to the editor.

The notion that the shamrock, which is believed to have been used by St. Patrick to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity, could be banned in Boston had local Irish-Americans seeing red, not green.

Soon it was international news. The Irish Echo, the nation's largest Irish-American newspaper, reported that the BHA was asking residents to remove shamrocks from their property. Lydia Agro, a spokeswoman for the Boston Housing Authority, did not deny the story, saying that residents were told to avoid public displays of any "bias indicators."

In Dublin, the Sunday Tribune headlined the story "Outrage as shamrock is seen as 'hate symbol.'" Agro was quoted again: "We want people to talk about what they may be doing that is causing an effect that they did not intend and not to display symbols people might consider to be bias indicators on the outsides of their buildings." The Boston Globe and Boston Herald followed with stories a week later.

Arguably the Irish capital of North America, South Boston had been plastered with shamrock symbols, from planters to shutters to basketball courts, for decades. There are three low-income housing projects in Southie: Old Colony, West Broadway and the Mary Ellen McCormack Developments. Traditionally home to poor Irish-American families, today they are only one-third white and most of those are elderly women of Irish descent.

For more than six months, BHA has been in damage control.

"To me, this whole thing started out as a rumor. This is the story that just won't quit," said a frustrated Agro recently. She claims she was misquoted by reporters.

Sandy Henriquez, BHA administrator, quickly pounded out letters to residents and Boston city officials. She wrote: "The BHA has no oral or written policy banning shamrocks nor has it given any of its residents any directive not to use shamrocks or other ethnic symbols such as the Puerto Rican flag." She said that no one at the BHA training session ever stated that the shamrock was the equivalent of a hate symbol. She wrote to the thousands of residents in South Boston's projects that banning shamrocks "is totally and completely false and has been fueled by very biased and incorrect reports."

But still, all these months later, the rumors persist. And it gets weirder. A South Boston Tribune editor told me the paper never ran a story about banning shamrocks, even though it was widely read and produced a ton of reader mail. And the columnist who wrote it, John Ciccone, did not return telephone calls about the controversy.

So how did the rumor start? And who's telling the truth? This Rashomon tale is typical of South Boston, a notoriously insular and self-protective neighborhood that's still reeling from its clash with the federal government over forced busing almost three decades ago.

Next Page: Pride swells and rumors snowball in an ethnically changing neighborhood

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