South Boston is still infamous for its bitter opposition to a school integration plan in the 1970s. Race riots broke out following Judge Arthur Garrity's decision to bus local kids to other schools, while black students were bused into Southie. As with so many social engineering strategies, this one fell on the backs of the black and white working class. The poverty level is high in South Boston, and in recent years the neighborhood has struggled with a tragic epidemic of youth suicide that parents and professionals are at a loss to explain.

This is the turbulent South Boston that elite Irish in the city would like to forget exists. And longtime Southie residents want to make sure they can't forget. Government intrusion is fought viciously here, so the rumor of a shamrock ban fell on particularly fertile soil.

Jeanne McDonald used to work for the BHA and lives in the McCormack Development. She leads its tenant task force and is one of the neighborhood's most active volunteers. Southie has been her home since birth. "This story [of the shamrock ban] goes back at least a couple of years. I have been hearing rumors that the BHA was going to consider banning shamrocks," she said. "I never heard anyone inside BHA say this, but I told them that if they even attempt it people would plaster this place with shamrocks."

According to McDonald, the rumor mill started churning way back in the '80s, when the government began integrating South Boston's housing projects. Black families complained they were being passed over for residency in South Boston. The BHA entered talks with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the NAACP. No lawsuit was filed -- the BHA settled out of court -- but as minorities started moving in, some locals became convinced that the government's goal was to fill the projects with minorities and oust the Irish-Americans.

As Irish descendants started moving out, and new people started moving in, the BHA suddenly started talking about "symbols" and diversity, McDonald said, and shamrocks seemed at risk.

"We didn't want the city government telling us how to integrate. We were doing well. We still are," she said. "Cultural symbols are going to represent the majority, whether it's Puerto Rican or Irish. And it's always been Irish, until now. But the ones who remain are not going to take down their shamrocks, not ever."

Today South Boston is also being invaded by the better off, not just the minority poor. Its real estate is hot, with a commanding view of the Boston skyline. It's a 10-minute train ride from downtown, a haven for moderate-income white folks who are being priced out of other neighborhoods.

Bill McGonagle, the deputy administrator of BHA, whose grandparents emigrated from County Donegal, Ireland, grew up in the Southie projects and still lives in the neighborhood. "It will never be an intention to ban shamrocks on our property," he said. "To me the shamrock is a symbol of cultural pride. It's also a religious symbol."

But the tension won't go away. Too many of Boston's race conflicts just happen to break out here. More recently the shamrock controversy has been edged out of the news by a wrangle over a South Boston bar that occasionally decorates with an "African jungle" motif, complete with monkeys. Owner Tom English says it's to make the bar feel warm in the winter. But in February his patrons began joking that it's a celebration of Black History Month.

So now officials from the Boston Licensing Board, the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League and the Massachusetts Coalition Against Discrimination are looking into the bar's decor as a possible hate crime. English is understandably upset. English, who talks with the help of a medical device that replaces his voice box, says he decorates his bar in various motifs year round. Yet he's probably headed to court to defend his decorating decisions.

But the news isn't all bad from Southie. An energized McDonald wants to change the neighborhood's image once and for all, especially in the housing developments. "There are good people here. They get a bad rap. We want to accentuate the positive in all of us."

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