Our Eastie explorations continued last week with two 7th grade classes out on a neighborhood tour. Our focus: immigration. First stop: 151 Meridien Street, a plain brick building where Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the Kennedy clan (shown right) was born in 1888. There is no sign that the origins of America's most influential political dynasty could be traced back to this humbled spot where we now stand.
Should we put a marker on this site? asks teacher/tour guide Julia Brasser. There is no definitive response from students, who seem confused as to why we are stalled at this unremarkable location. We need time in the classroom to help kids learn about the Kennedy legacy. Some of them have heard of Ted Kennedy, because of the television coverage of his funeral, but that's about it.
Onward to the waterfront, where we gather around Julia alongside the boarded-up Immigration Intake Building (left.) One in six Americans have an ancestor who came through this building to a new life in America, she tells the kids. I am momentarily stunned by this factoid, imagining the impact of these generations fanning out acro0ss America from this very location, over the course of a long century. And then I recall the lavish renovation of Ellis Island. The contrast between that gleaming facility and this abandoned, forlorn structure is stunning. Boston was second only to New York in the total number of immigrant arrivals around the turn of the 20th century. And yet we appear to have turned our backs on our own history.
We return to the Umana via The Golden Stairs (right), which carried immigrants up from the docks to the streets of East Boston and then back down again to jobs along the waterfront.
"Miss, we should paint these stairs gold," says one of the girls. What a good idea...
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