nd flight of the African-American population into the projects. When the Urban Renewal Act was first presented, the citizens of the Hill were adamant about their disdain for the Act. There is "no way are they gonna take any property on Mission Hill because if they take one street then it was the beginning of the end; Mission Hill would no longer be." The sense of community in Mission Hill was fantastic. The sense of togetherness and fight was combined and created into a massive force of angered citizens. The Urban Renewal Act was halted when the families of Mission Hill marched on the State House coming in droves of people. But the conflict between the citizens and the politicians would take a new turn when Harvard University and the hospitals would enter into the battle. New conflict, new problems. The idea of "who cares about the people only the land is important" was very evident. Before in 1941 when the first small projects were built, an affordable, easy cost of living was accessible. The difference between these projects and the ones built later in the 1950s was that you had voters and political pull actually living in these projects. So the projects were kept safe, new and beautiful. However, when the political pull was lost and the projects lost its importance blacks were forced to live there. Whites felt that Blacks were forced on them because of the Urban Renewal plan. Before this the Blacks and the Whites never really crossed paths and never had much conflict. And Harvard's involvement had been trying to buy out the Mission Hill area since 1960. They have tried to buy it out piece by piece like a puzzle. The citizens of the Hill feel that "they are letting the neighborhood go to the dogs." This conflict has been such a problem that some people believed in the 1970s that Mission Hill might one day not exist because of the growth of the hospitals. Boston according to J Anthony Lukas is the "cradle of liberty, no city in the na...
