I’m very grateful to Steve Welzer and Green Horizon Magazine for editing and publishing this tribute to Mel King in their Fall 2023 issue. The following is the full version, as submitted. ~Eli

On March 28th, 2023, there was a dimming of light throughout Boston and across the world as Melvin H. King transitioned to ancestor. Boston lost its Lion King at the age of 94.

It is impossible to summarize the impact that Mel’s life had on the city, and on the people who endeavor to do justice to his life and vision.

State Senator Lydia Edwards put it this way:

All I can say is thank you.
There will be a list
of political accolades
that expand over decades that speak to Mel’s vision and intellect.
But it was his steadfast dedication
to revolutionary connection
every Sunday at his house that left a lasting mark.
The act of breaking bread
enjoying food and thoughts.

He dedicated his life
to the political radical
idea, that as he said “love is the
question and the answer”.

Thank you Mel for fighting, running, laughing, and living.

Rest in power.

King brilliantly balanced holistic, big-picture thinking with small-scale, person-to-person interactions that called all of us to our higher selves. He knew that large-scale systemic change must be modeled at the individual level and built through collaborative action.

He was a teacher, an organizer, a writer, an artist, a state legislator, and a transformative candidate for Boston Mayor. King knew that his 1983 campaign had put a marker in the sand and that the city would never look back. On election night, Mel described the campaign as “what historians will recognize as a turning point in the social, cultural, and political history of Boston.” Indeed, it ushered in, through countless interactions over the following years, today’s Boston which is brimming with visionary leadership reflective of its diverse populations.

At Mel’s four-hour memorial service and “homegoing celebration”, Boston’s Green New Deal Mayor, Michelle Wu, emotionally remarked:

“Mel’s flame burned with a radiance and warmth that found and was felt in every corner of our city, and everywhere he went, he carried that light with him. He held it up to our hearts and kindled it to a determination and love for justice and community. He held it up to our city, and kindled the heart of Boston, a heart that burns brighter every day with the fire of his legacy.”

She continued with a personal tale that rings true to everyone who knew of Mel and his wife Joyce’s profound sharing through their welcoming Sunday brunches:

“I remember the first time I had the chance to join the brunch table, as a new neighbor in the South End, struggling with the day-to-day of how to put one foot in front of the other, raising my sisters, trying to care for my mom, in the throes of crisis, and wondering, “where did we belong?” And I made my way because I heard that all were welcome at Miss Joyce and Mel’s table. And over those little fruit cups, I found myself taking in a big helping of community. A belonging of connection. Of love. And I walked out of there feeling for the first time in this city, that maybe my family and I could belong.”

Mel’s 1983 mayoral campaign gave Boston the Rainbow Coalition, which was borrowed by Jesse Jackson at the national level in two successive campaigns for President. In 1997, King recognized that a new political formation was necessary, and founded the Rainbow Coalition Party. He said of the Democrats, “I cannot be identified with parties that have those kinds of policies, and which really don’t care about workers.” In 2002, King proudly led the merger of the Rainbow Coalition Party with the Massachusetts Green Party, forming today’s Green-Rainbow Party and supporting then-gubernatorial candidate Jill Stein.

“Jill Stein is the only candidate who will speak truth to power,” said King. “She’s the only one that makes issues of racism and social justice integral parts of her campaign.”

With King’s passing, Stein memorialized Mel this way:

Mel King was the inspiration for so much of what is just and decent in politics today. He was ahead of the curve throughout his decades of activism, including his pioneering legislation for community gardens, access to sustainable fresh food, and community development corporations to provide affordable housing and jobs for people, not profit. Mel’s vision and courage are more timely and needed than ever. The Green-Rainbow Party is honored to carry forward his living political legacy.

Two months earlier, the Embrace Memorial was unveiled on the Boston Common, a tribute to another King couple influential to Boston. Fashioned after the loving embrace of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King that was captured in a famous photograph of the couple, the sculpture invites people directly into the heart of their love. 

As Coretta Scott King described their animating love, “Love is such a powerful force. It’s there for everyone to embrace—that kind of unconditional love for all humankind. That is the kind of love that impels people to go into the community and try to change conditions for others, to take risks for what they believe in.”

One month after Mel’s death, another giant – Harry Belafonte – joined him as an ancestor. In a remarkable documentary about Belafonte’s life, Sing Your Song, he recounts a revelation that came late to him. “Those of us who were part of the civil rights movement, as we grew older, as victories began to evidence themselves, I think we blinked. I think we took a lot for granted. I don’t think we secured the way in which we passed on the baton.” He first called a gathering of the elders, and then “began to understand that the thing I thought I needed to do next was perhaps call a gathering of the young. There perhaps would lay the key.”

Mel, on the other hand, was focused on the young people in his community from the very beginning. He knew that empowering them was the key to unlocking cultural, economic, and political transformation. But like Belafonte, Mel knew the power of song. At the 2009 Green-Rainbow Party convention, he had the entire convention divide up into breakout groups to write uplifting lyrics and rhymes and anthems of joyful struggle for change.

His politics represented something entirely distinct from the prevailing image and practice of U.S. politics. They drew on rich traditions of the African diaspora, woven through the growing political consciousness of the civil rights era and the deepening practice of community organizing. Love and listening and respect and learning were at the center. Sharing was a core principle. Sharing over bread was even better. 

In 2014, John Rensenbrink spoke at the Green-Rainbow Party convention:

The model for the Big Tent is the rainbow. It has grown up right out of the American experience, implicit in it, and rich with potential. It has been bought with incalculable suffering, blood and guts, for centuries. A terrible war has been fought because of it. Lynchings and institutional hazing and unspeakable brutalities are part of the record. And they continue.”

“Yet in spite of this and maybe to some degree because of it, black and brown and red and yellow and white are perforce growing into an interaction of peoples. Different cultures, different languages, different social mores, different values rub shoulders in a very mobile society. Diversity is beginning to become the norm. Not fully yet, not by any means, but it is on the way.

Rensenbrink distinguished the rainbow approach from the left-right coalition that Ralph Nader endeavored to build in his 2004 and 2008 independent campaigns for president. For John, nature was the teacher, and diversity and relationship were the lessons.

As I reflect on what’s possible in one lifetime, and the lessons that Mel’s life generously leaves for those of us who follow, it feels important to honor his gift and his legacy. In many ways, Mel was the consummate ecological political actor before Rensenbrink ever thought of “ecological politics”. And his deep impact on the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts continues to ripple out in waves infused with his spirit. 

At this moment in time when his lessons feel absolutely vital, it is encouraging to see the rise of another ecological political actor in Dr. Cornel West, seeking the Green Party nomination for President in 2024. Speaking about the lineage of traditions and ancestors that inform his understanding of the world and how to move through it, it is clear that West embodies the same traditions that Belafonte and Mel King and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King so powerfully advanced. 

As Dr. King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

As Dr. West said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” 

And as Mel put it in a poem, 

Love of power builds fences
Power of love
Opens doors
Love of power is ideology based
Requires institutions
And the power of love
Is holistic
And builds community
The love of power sets limits
The power of love is infinite.

The arc of nature’s rainbow does not care about your ideology, but it bends towards love.

Rest in peace.
Rest in power.
Rest in love.
Mel King, presente.