Hassie Benjamin Haith Jr. (born 1942), also known as Boston Ben, is an American activist from Boston, Massachusetts. Haith has been active in anti-crime groups since the 1980s. He is recognized as the founder of the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation. Haith is also known for creating and copyrighting the Juneteenth flag.

Career

Activism

Haith is a

grass roots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...

community activist who publicly identifies and critiques racial disparity. He is active in anti-crime activities and he has been critical of law enforcement. Throughout his life he has advocated for investigations of the police. In 1983, when he was 40 years old, he ran for public office for the first time. Haith ran for the District 7 city council seat, which represented a predominantly African American section of Boston. He described himself as a community activist who also owned an advertising agency with his wife. He ran his campaign out of a tent near Dudley Station Historic District. In 1986, he advocated for black areas of Boston to secede from the city. In 2008 Haith and others camped out in the empty apartments located in the Lenox Street projects and Orchard Park in Roxbury. The goal of the action was to end the " Stop Snitching" culture by getting neighbors to " drop a dime" when they saw illegal activity.

Anti-LGBT activism

In April 1985 he also spoke out against a gay couple (two males) who became a

foster home Foster care is a system in which a minor has been placed into a ward, group home (residential child care community, treatment center, etc.), or private home of a state-certified caregiver, referred to as a "foster parent" or with a family mem ...

for two young boys in Boston. Haith wanted publicity for his run for City Council, so he contacted the editors at the ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'' and complained that two young boys were placed with a male couple in his neighborhood. The article had been written by the Boston Globe reporter Ken Cooper. Haith told Cooper that he was "completely opposed...and it was a breakdown of the society and its values and morals." The Associated Press picked up the story, and ultimately, the gay couple lost custody of the children. The publicity led Massachusetts governor

Michael Dukakis Michael Stanley Dukakis (; born November 3, 1933) is an American retired lawyer and politician who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1975 to 1979 and again from 1983 to 1991. He is the longest-serving governor in Massachusetts history a ...

to order the boys removed from the home the next day. The next month, seven of the nine members of Roxbury Highlands Neighborhood Association Inc., penned an

op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page", is a written prose piece, typically published by a North-American newspaper or magazine, which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board. O ...

which was published in the ''Boston Globe''. In the editorial, the members stated that Haith had misrepresented the opinions of his neighbors. They also accused the ''Globe'' and reporter Ken Cooper of "...creating the controversy it purports to report".

Juneteenth

Haith founded the National Juneteenth Celebration Foundation, and he led the holiday's first Juneteenth flag-raising ceremony in Boston's

Roxbury Heritage State Park Roxbury Heritage State Park is a history-themed heritage park in the oldest part of Roxbury, a former town annexed in 1868 by Boston, Massachusetts. It is anchored by the Dillaway–Thomas House, a large colonial structure built in 1750 and thoug ...

in 2000. Haith designed the Juneteenth flag in 1997, and in 2000 (after the addition of the text June 19, 1865), he copyrighted the design.

References

External links

Video News – Bias in covering Roxbury crime (Ben Haith)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Haith, Ben 1942 births Living people Activists from Boston Flag designers African-American activists Discrimination against LGBT people in the United States Juneteenth American community activists