Thursday, 4:30 PM
Yawkey name for Roxbury clubhouse is criticized
By Adrienne P. Samuels
Globe Staff
As the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston put the finishing touches on a $7-million renovation at a Roxbury facility, several elected officials are in an uproar over the building’s new name, to be unveiled today at a grand reopening ceremony.
Organizers say it only makes sense for the facility to be named after Tom and Jean Yawkey, who once owned the Red Sox and created the foundation that donated $3 million to help renovate the ailing club.
That’s a problem for some in this majority black neighborhood who say that Tom Yawkey’s racial policies resulted in the Red Sox turning down Jackie Robinson and, more than a decade later, becoming the last Major League Baseball team to integrate.
‘‘There won’t be a Malcolm X center in South Boston; there can’t be a monument to Tom Yawkey in Roxbury,’’ said State Senator Dianne Wilkerson, one of seven cosigners of a two-page letter sent this week to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and the Yawkey Foundation.
The letter — also signed by state representatives Gloria Fox, Byron Rushing, and Liz Malia and City Council members Chuck Turner, Sam Yoon, and Felix Arroyo — asks for a meeting to discuss ways to honor the Yawkeys’ generosity while being sensitive to the pain associated with the Yawkey name in the neighborhood.
‘‘We would most assuredly not have chosen such a racially divisive, polarizing and antagonizing figure to fly on the banner of our Roxbury Clubhouse,’’ the letter says. ‘‘Where was the thinking that this would make sense in a community home to the largest percentage of African-Americans in Boston?’’
Boys & Girls Club officials said there are no plans to remove the name.
