Eight years after it was first proposed, and eight months after it was signed into law, Boston’s Commission on Black Men & Boys on Thursday announced its 21 members, capping the long effort with a celebratory news conference at City Hall.
Selected from over 300 hopefuls, the commission members are students, attorneys, community and neighborhood leaders, former elected officials, and higher education administrators. Seven were appointed by Mayor Michelle Wu, seven were selected from City Council recommendations, and seven were chosen from a pool of applicants.
City leaders celebrated the commission finally coming to fruition, and nodded to the legacy of Malcolm X, whose birthday was May 19.
Former city councilor Tito Jackson, who first proposed the commission in 2014 and will serve on it now, said the city has come a long way, but lamented that the moment had taken so long to arrive.
“As goes Black men — as goes the length of their lives, the outcomes, the education, the health of Black men — will go the city of Boston,” Jackson said. “Why Black men? Because we are the men who built this country, built this city, and we will be the men who are restored back into our neighborhoods, back into our communities, and back into our families, to uplift them.”
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