Mar 31, 2018 3 min read

“I got something I want to tell everybody / I got something I want everybody to understand now / Y’Know we all make mistakes sometimes / And all the ways we can correct our mistakes / We got to try one more time.” – James Brown, “Lost Somebody”

For several days after civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, this week (April 4) in 1968, angry blacks across America rioted, burning down buildings, looting, clashing with police, and causing countless injuries and millions of dollars in damages.

In the predominantly black sections of Boston, Mass., especially Roxbury and South Boston, the rioting was so bad that Boston’s mayor, Kevin White, faced a huge dilemma. On April 5, the “Godfather of Soul,” James Brown, was scheduled to perform at Boston Garden, prompting fears that a large gathering of mostly black and angry concertgoers might result in further violence. Canceling the concert might result in even more anger and rioting among blacks. But if he allowed the concert to proceed it might signal to the rest of Boston, and his own beleaguered police force, that he wasn’t taking the threat of further violence seriously.

And then a young aide to Mayor White, Tom Atkins, proposed that the concert go on, and that it be televised so most blacks, and many whites, would be in front of their TVs and not out in the streets the night after King’s death. Boston’s public television station, WGBH, agreed to broadcast the concert, but such a televised broadcast would cost Brown some $60,000 because it would violate a non-compete agreement his camp had negotiated regarding a future televised rebroadcast of Brown’s concert.

When White agreed that Boston would compensate Brown for that loss, Brown agreed to the concert’s televised broadcast, and as Atkins had predicted, the streets of Boston that night were mostly empty, and in the following days Boston achieved, compared with most other major cities, some semblance of calmness and order.

At one point during the concert a few young men tried to climb the stage, causing the Boston police to push them back, at which point Brown persuaded the police to back off, and told the crowd, “Wait! Step down, now, be a gentleman. I asked the police to step back, because I think I can get some respect from my own people.”

He did get that respect, and the concert went on without further incident.

By the sheer force of his personality, and the god-like status he had in the black community, James Brown had honored Dr. King’s message of nonviolence. The concert later became a documentary titled “The Night James Brown Saved Boston.”

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s e-mail address is bruce@historylessons.net.