Batson's historic battles

The historian was Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a special assistant to President Kennedy in the early 1960s. In recent years he has cast a scornful eye on the social turmoil of that decade and the multiculturalism that grew out of it. At a lecture at the Boston Public Library, he called the 1960s an "alien intrusion in the history of the nation." The Globe article said Schlesinger "granted that the period's `insurrectionary thrust' did help bring certain social and cultural issues to the top of the national agenda, such as the war in Vietnam, race relations, equality for women, and gay rights.

"But he argued that the decade's rebels made only a `marginal' contribution to ending the war in Vietnam and described them as `historical illiterates.' "

Batson fired back in her letter: "My review of the '60s is quite different. I remember the loss of life of African-American citizens because they demanded the right to educate their children, and I cannot hold back the tears as I recall with sorrow the lynching of African-American citizens because we felt the law of the land gave us the right to vote, and we were willing to fight for it. How can we forget the murder of the four little African-American girls as they prepared for church services that fatal Saturday morning in Birmingham, Ala.? This is only a sample of what happened to us in the 1960s."

To the end, Batson fought for the proper reading of history and made plenty herself. The educator, civil rights activist, philanthropist, and historical preservationist died this week at 82. She fought for the desegregation of schools with the local NAACP. She expanded opportunity for African-American students in Metco. She started a foundation to fund opportunity in education and the arts. As director of community mental health at Boston University's medical school, she urged psychiatrists and psychologists to stop patronizing low-income and working-class clients by assuming that they knew better what their clients need than the clients do.

As a civil rights activist in the 1970s, she helped put pressure on the local media to improve their coverage and hiring of people of color. In the early 1980s, she took her fight inside, becoming a director on the board of Channel 7. "It's not going to be easy, Batson told the Globe about Channel 7 in 1982. "It's going to be tough. I have a small amount of stock, but as director, I have one vote and a big mouth that I've never been reluctant to use."

She became a millionaire from her investment in Channel 7 but never stopped her march toward filling in the gaps ignored by white historians. She was a force behind the scenes in urging the late Henry Hampton to finish his historic 1987 public television documentary of the civil rights movement, "Eyes on the Prize." In the late 1980s she oversaw the initial restoration of the nearly 200-year-old African Meeting House on Beacon Hill, the longest-standing African-American church in the United States. Batson called the meeting house, which a refuge for abolitionists and black children seeking an education "our Statue of Liberty."

She may have called the African Meeting House a statue of liberty, but Batson was the woman holding the torch. In a 1963 letter to the editor, she responded to critics of school desegregation by saying, "Raising educational standards without eliminating the basic problems of segregation-in-fact is no more than separate-but-equal." That same year, when the antibusing School Committee chairwoman Louise Day Hicks -- who also recently died -- announced that black children who boycott segregated schools would "not be punished for the sins of their parents," Batson responded by saying, "We are glad to hear Mrs. Hicks' statement that the children will not suffer for the sins of their parents, for they have suffered enough for the sins of school administrations past and present."

Forty years later, the present looks too much like the past. Educators and politicians have imposed standardized tests on students without eliminating the basic problems of resegregated schools. METCO has never been fully funded. As revisionists blamed busing for white flight, Batson said in 1995: "Busing was worth it. In Boston, we had schools with no libraries, schools in dilapidated condition, schools with inadequate numbers of teachers, and a school administration with no blacks in key positions."

Today, all across the nation, there are too many dilapidated schools without librarians and with inadequate numbers of teachers trained in their subjects. The only way they will change is if Boston and America pick up the torch Batson can no longer hold. Contrary to Schlesinger, without Batson's "alien intrusion," we all would have been illiterate about our history. Correction: In my last column, I inadvertently called the Council of Conservative Citizens the Council of Confederate Citizens. Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com.