Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Thursday took action on her campaign promise to foster equity within the city, appointing Frank Farrow, her Roxbury campaign coordinator who has a history of community involvement, to direct a newly established Office for Black Male Advancement.
Farrow will simultaneously lead the city's new Commission on Black Men and Boys, a separate initiative created last year by acting Mayor Kim Janey that does not yet have its 21-member volunteer body. Both initiatives will be housed within the Equity and Inclusion Cabinet.
On Wednesday, the City Council began debating whether Farrow, as a paid city employee of the newly established office, could serve on the volunteer commission.
The Office of Black Male Advancement, according the city, was created to "ensure Black men and boys have support to thrive and share in" the Boston's prosperity.
"We're taking an important step forward in Boston in advancing racial equity," Wu said, announcing Farrow's appointment from the Bruce C. Bolling municipal building in Roxbury, the historic heart of Black Boston.
Farrow said: "As a Boston native, I understand the persistent social and economic inequities facing Black people. As a Black man raising two Black boys in this city, I want my sons Christian and Kingston to have every opportunity and every resource available to them, so the narrative is no longer about Black men and boys needing to be resilient, or striving to be better, but of them thriving and realizing their full potential, and included in conversations of Boston's prosperity."
Prior to Farrow's appointment and his stint in the Wu campaign, Farrow founded Elevate Boston, a nonprofit dedicated to children and families. He also led the Foodcare Boston initiative, which distributed food, toiletries and personal protective equipment to local families throughout the pandemic.
Applications to serve on Farrow's commission are now open, and will remain open until the end of the month. Once the mayor appoints members to fully establish the commission, the panel will get to work holding meetings and launching a community survey to refine its agenda and focus issues, Farrow told GBH News.
The creation of the Office of Black Male Advancement and applications to fill the Commission on Black Men and Boys come 79 days into Wu's tenure.
The idea of such an office has percolated within Boston's bureaucracy for nearly a decade. In 2014, the city council unanimously passed the ordinance to create the commission, but the effort was vetoed by then-Mayor Marty Walsh. The commission ordinance passed again and Janey signed it into effect last year.
Speaking at the Bolling Center event, former mayoral candidate Tito Jackson pointed out that the city has at least two other offices targeted to specific constituencies: the Office of Women's Advancement and the Office of Immigrant Advancement.
Jackson and other speakers repeatedly pointed to the multiple challenges Black people face living in Boston: they are a disproportionate victims of homicide; they enjoy a disproportionately low share of city business contracts, and they hold a disproportionately low share of wealth.
Asked how non-Black residents should view the new office and commission, which carry an explicit racial distinction, Wu said: "This is the future and the success, and the prosperity of Boston connected to each and every one of us." As she spoke, the mayor motioned to the group of about two dozen Black men standing behind her.
"The future of Black men and boys in Boston," Wu said, "is the future of Boston."
