Thomas I. Atkins
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas Irving Atkins[1] (March 2, 1939 – June 27, 2008[2]) was an American attorney and politician who served as a member of the Boston City Council and General Counsel of the NAACP.
Atkins was born on March 2, 1939, in Elkhart, Indiana[3] to a Pentecostal minister and a domestic worker.[1] As a child, he overcame a bout of polio.[3] He was the first black student body president at Elkhart High School.[1]
In 1960, he was elected student body president at Indiana University Bloomington. He was the school's first African American student body president as well as the first African American student body president in the Big Ten.[3] That same year he married Sharon Soash, a 1960 graduate of Indiana University who served as his campaign manager when he ran for student body president.[4] The couple had to marry in Michigan because Indiana prohibited interracial marriage.[5] Atkins graduated from Indiana in 1961 with a bachelor's degree in political science. In 1963 he earned a master's in Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University. In 1969 he graduated from Harvard Law School.[3]
While at Harvard, Atkins served as executive secretary of Boston's NAACP office.[6] During the mid-1960s, he also hosted a Saturday talk show on Boston's Black radio station, WILD, where he discussed current events that affected the Black community.[7] His co-host was Lovell Dyett, who later went on to become a talk show host on WBZ Radio.[8]
Politics
Atkins was first elected to the Boston City Council in 1967,[9] becoming the first Black elected to the position.[10] The day following the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Atkins convinced Mayor Kevin White not to cancel a James Brown concert that was to be held that evening at the Boston Garden and helped negotiate an agreement between White and Brown to have the concert televised by WGBH-TV. White and Atkins hoped that televising the concert would keep angry and frustrated teenagers at home and prevent the looting and rioting that was occurring in other cities.[11] The concert has been credited with preventing riots from breaking out in Boston.[11][12][13]
In 1971, Atkins ran for Mayor of Boston. He finished in fourth place with 11 percent of the vote.[14]
On October 26, 1971, Atkins was appointed Secretary of Communities and Development by Governor Francis W. Sargent.[15] He was sworn in on November 1, 1971,[16] becoming the first African-American to serve as a state Cabinet Secretary.[2]
