April 6, 2003 Sunday

Blacks Seek to Expand Comfort Zone in Boston; In City With a Sketchy Racial Past, Young Professionals Party With a Purpose to Erase Boundaries

Pamela Ferdinand, Special to The Washington Post

BOSTON

Dawn Franklyn, her dreadlocks tied back in a sleek headscarf and her silky blouse baring one shoulder, perched herself and two stylish friends by the dimly lit bar at Whiskey Park one recent Friday evening. They ordered mixed drinks, chatting and laughing, while acquaintances lounged on a leather couch nearby.

It may have looked like an ordinary cocktail hour, but Whiskey Park was on the brink of a spontaneous social revolution. Franklyn is black. Her friends are black. And by late evening, more than 100 other black patrons had transformed the downtown bar, which typically caters to an upscale, mostly white crowd.

"I don't meet any black professionals downtown, but I don't feel we should leave," said Franklyn, a 27-year-old accountant, as she nursed an $ 11 apple martini. "We should make the city aware we are here. We just want to find places where if we don't feel comfortable, we make people feel more comfortable with us."

Welcome to the "Friendly Takeover," a sporadic event engineered by local software developer Reggie Cummings to help promote and integrate a city with a tumultuous record on race relations. Via last-minute e-mails, Cummings invites a select group of black professionals essentially to crash Boston venues that need -- as he puts it -- "a little bit of color." They include places from the chic nightspot Vox Populi to the Frog Pond ice rink on Boston Common.

"It's about time that the after-work social scene in Boston becomes a little more balanced, if only one place at a time," said Cummings, adding there are plans to expand the "takeovers" to other cities, including Orlando and Denver. "It doesn't matter if two people show up or 200 show up. These are public places, and we're the public."

Cummings and others say black professionals need to start taking more advantage of all the city has to offer, and Boston has to do a better job of extending the welcome mat to black professionals, especially given its tarnished past.

This is the place where busing riots occurred less than 30 years ago, where killer Charles Stuart in 1989 fictionalized a black man to blame for the murder of his pregnant wife, and where a South Boston pub displayed stuffed monkeys during Black History Month three years ago. Boston is one of the few American cities that has never had a black mayor (although it does have a black female sheriff), and the city nearly lost its bid for the 2004 Democratic National Convention amid criticism that it appeared too white -- even though one out of four Boston residents is black.

According to a Boston Magazine poll, both whites and nonwhites nationwide said they believe Boston is more tolerant of racism than it is racist. But interestingly, whites said the city is more integrated than segregated, while nonwhites said Boston is more segregated than integrated.

"The only diversity you see downtown is after five o'clock when it's time to clean up the buildings," said George "Chip" Greenidge, executive director of the National Black College Alliance and founder of the State of Young Black Boston, an organization for blacks in their twenties and thirties. "Change has been very slow."

Black professionals are often reluctant to put down roots here because the city lacks neighborhoods with large percentages of middle- and upper-class black residents, and it is not uncommon for black professionals to depart for Atlanta, Chicago, New York or Washington, where there are more black men and women in positions of influence. Unlike those cities, the number of Boston social establishments catering to an upscale black crowd -- one of the most famous is Bob the Chef's -- can be counted on one hand.

"A common refrain among professionals of color who come to Boston is that while they may be able to achieve success professionally, it's personally where they suffer the most," said William "Mo" Cowan, 33, one of six partners of color at a prominent Boston firm and president of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association. "The ability to relax and be comfortable among one's peers and among a diverse population is a critical component of a city being, or at least appearing to be, welcoming to all people."

Toward that end, Cummings and two friends formed a group six years ago called the Inner Circle, and they launched "First Fridays," a professional networking event and party that now attracts hundreds of people.

"Friendly Takeovers" takes that effort to connect black professionals a step further by connecting them with the city and its array of social and cultural options, Cummings said. If a restaurant is chosen, he sends e-mails inviting people to make dinner reservations for the same night. If it's a nightclub or a bar, he tells them where to show up and when, and he provides them with a strict dress code: "In short, we are asking that all of our patrons GET DRESSED UP & help to represent our community with style and class."

Gina-Marie Toussaint, 25, a real estate marketing consultant who lives in Boston, considers the takeovers a breakthrough. Many of her friends moved to Washington, but she decided to stay here.

"If you can't make it in your own city, you can't make it anywhere else," she said.

On the recent Friday night, several top-notch restaurants and bars around the Boston Park Plaza Hotel hummed with activity, but not a single black person could be seen inside. Things were decidedly different at Whiskey Park, which is located in the hotel.

A group of mostly black men and women in their twenties and thirties sat together in one corner, greeting friends and introducing themselves to newcomers. Other people mingled around the bar, prompting a nearby white businessman to ask, "Is this black professionals night?"

"If there wasn't something like this going on, I'm not really sure I would have another option to meet people," said Odette Mitchell, 28, a systems analyst for a software company.

Reaction to the "Friendly Takeovers" has been mixed. At other venues, the noticeable shift in demographics has caused some non-black patrons to gawk or leave, and one manager complained of being caught off-guard and short-staffed. But overall, the experience has been positive, Cummings and others said. Participants return to places they might otherwise never have tried, and businesses welcome the high-caliber clientele.

"Reggie's given us exposure in certain communities that we have not necessarily had, which is good for the club," said Kevin Keohane, who manages Vertigo, a nightclub in the financial district that caters to both blacks and whites. "He tends to bring a sophisticated group."

The initiative comes at a time when other organizations also are mobilizing on behalf of black professional Bostonians. The Partnership works to recruit and retain black professionals, and the State of Young Black Boston aims to improve quality of life here for those in their twenties to forties. Black and White Boston Coming Together, which began 14 years ago as a business networking group, also is increasingly focused on the growth and development of black-owned businesses.

Cummings sees huge potential.

"At some point the barriers have to come down," he said. "The doors have to open, and the greatness that is this city has to be available for everyone."