This hope is home-grown

McGonagle, 57, was named administrator of the Boston Housing Authority. He succeeds his longtime boss and friend Sandra Henriquez, who is moving on to a major housing post in the Obama administration. McGonagle had been deputy administrator for 17 years.

His major responsibility has been to maintain - or achieve - racial harmony in public housing. Under both Ray Flynn and Tom Menino, he has been troubleshooter, sounding board, and problem solver.

He was a natural in the post, having grown up in public housing himself, in the Mary Ellen McCormack development in South Boston. Harry Spence brought him into the agency in 1981, from the South Boston Boys and Girls Club. But his ascent really began in 1987, when Flynn agreed to integrate the housing projects in South Boston and Charlestown. That was a charged proposition.

It is no exaggeration to say that, a decade after busing, people of color didn't venture into Charlestown or Southie unless it was absolutely necessary. In one sign of the delicacy of the situation, Flynn announced his housing project integration plan in the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, as if he wanted to hide it from his constituents.

The busing crisis was very much in Flynn's thoughts as he pondered how to desegretate projects. Specifically, he was sensitive to the feeling, especially in South Boston, that busing had been imposed on residents from outside. He wanted to avoid that perception.

"One of the biggest criticisms of the busing crisis was that it was foisted by a judge from Wellesley," McGonagle said yesterday. "I'm a project kid from 170 Dorchester St. Nobody could say I was an outsider, because it wasn't true. I had a personal relationship with hundreds of people, and I had credibility."

He would need that credibility. "It was very hostile," McGonagle said. "There were predictions that this would be as disastrous - or perhaps more disastrous - as the busing crisis. Some people were saying that moving children on yellow buses was one thing, but moving families into the neighborhood had the potential to be a disaster. We prepared for the worst and hoped for the best."

Managing desegregation meant keeping an eye on every family that moved in, working hand in hand with the police Community Disorders Unit.

The worst fears of violence were never realized, which is not to say that there were never any problems. There were.

In 1989, a black family at the McCormack had shots fired into their door. Flynn, Police Commissioner Mickey Roache, and Cardinal Bernard Law visited the family that night, in an effort to send the message that violence would not be tolerated. The family was eventually given a Section 8 certificate and relocated outside public housing.

The worst of the racial violence came not at the beginning of desegregation, as many expected, but several years later, as families of color began to achieve critical mass in the early 1990s.

Now, families of color are a large majority in all the city's housing developments, regardless of neighborhood. That trend has largely been driven by immigrants and other new arrivals who have no memory and little knowledge of the turbulent but relatively recent past.

As McGonagle prepares to replace Henriquez as head of the Boston Housing Authority, he counts her as the best of the six administrators he has worked for and the most effective head the agency has had. She transformed an enormously troubled BHA into one that wins kudos, he says.

The agency McGonagle inherits is no longer defined by racial strife. "I'm humbled and very proud," McGonagle said. "I guess I feel like a guy who's played every position who finally gets a shot at the pitcher's mound."

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.