Brother Mel, I want to congratulate you for in your leadership, using the leverage of your leadership, to organize a rainbow coalition of the rejected, to pull all the people together.

(audience applauding) [Director] Can you all speak about Mel King?

- I miss Mel King.

- What a phenomenal man.

- I used to see him walking- A gentle giant.

Yes and he always had time- Just a calmness about him.

And he would say, "Songbird, what you gonna tell me about today?"

- Yep.

- I said, you know me- What's on your mind.

What's on my mind.

That's it.

That's it, Mel King.

And he would pull up a chair and sit down and could talk to you.

- Mel King was someone who I thought was an extraordinary individual.

His home was a place that everybody knew it was there, for every Sunday, that was the place to go and sit and interface with the other activists in the city of Boston.

Mel King was an institution here.

(people chatting) [Kim Janey] I grew up knowing Mel King.

Ive known him all my life.

He lived one street over from where my great grandmother lived.

You know, I often talk about all of the ways and how Boston was different and how Black folks were denied so many opportunities and how, you know, all the ways that we were being left out as one piece of the story of growing up in the 70s and 80s.

But the other piece of the story, which I think is so powerful, are the ways that the Black community organized.

And so seeing Mel be active on so many issues in our neighborhood and in the city and then run for mayor and passing out flyers on his historic run way back when and then now here I am, it's just incredible.

Mel King.

(indistinct chatter) Yes, I'm a first time voter and I voted for Mel, oh Lord.

Why?

Because he's the first Black man to run for Boston.

- Mel King changed the dynamics of Boston.

He was a very serious candidate, he got a lot of votes, not just Black votes, but he did come up short.

That would've changed the city tremendously back then.

- The Black community is clearly not a monolith, there are various elements to it.

First, do you agree with those who say that if you don't get 100% of the Black vote, that you are in trouble?

Obviously, for anybody to make that kind of statement, I don't think they have any understanding of either the Black community or the political process.

You never hear them saying that white candidates have to get 100% of the white vote.

I've never heard anybody say that an Irish candidate has to get 100% of the Irish vote.

Or an Italian candidate, 100% of the Italian vote in order for them to be credible.

I think that the place that that kind of question comes from is rooted in the racist nature of this society.

- His involvement in that campaign allowed a sharper light to be focused on it, those discrepancies and those deficits of the city of Boston.