Small Mercies

Small Mercies Plot Summary

Introduction

In the summer of 1974, Boston was a city on edge. The heat was relentless, the tension palpable. A federal court order mandating the desegregation of Boston's public schools through busing was about to transform the city's landscape forever. While much of America had been wrestling with integration for two decades since Brown v. Board of Education, Boston—particularly its working-class neighborhoods like South Boston—had managed to maintain segregated schools through various political maneuvers. Now, that era was ending, and no one was prepared for what would follow. The story that unfolds in the volatile streets of Boston reveals how racial division can tear at the fabric of communities and destroy individual lives. Through the lens of Mary Pat Fennessy, a tough Irish-American mother from the projects who loses her daughter in circumstances tied to the racial upheaval, we witness how prejudice, fear, and tribal loyalty can create unbearable human costs. The narrative explores not just the public face of resistance to integration, but the intimate, personal ways in which hate can corrupt even the most fundamental human connections—between neighbors, between friends, and most devastatingly, between parents and children. This examination of Boston's painful history offers profound insights for anyone seeking to understand how racial tensions shape communities and how the wounds of division can persist across generations.

Chapter 1: Boston 1974: A City Divided by Court-Ordered Busing

In June 1974, U.S. District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity ruled that the Boston School Committee had "systematically disadvantaged black school children" in the public school system. His solution was to implement a busing program that would transport students between predominantly white and predominantly black neighborhoods to achieve integration. With the ruling issued in late June and implementation set for September 12, families had less than ninety days to prepare for a change that would upend their lives. That summer was exceptionally hot, and the lack of rain seemed to mirror the escalating tensions that were about to boil over. The court order targeted two schools in particular: Roxbury High School in the predominantly African American neighborhood and South Boston High School in the heart of the Irish-American working-class community. Students from each school would be transported to the other, forcing integration in areas that had remained stubbornly segregated despite the civil rights progress seen elsewhere in America. Political leaders in Boston had successfully resisted integration for years, maintaining neighborhood schools that kept communities separate along racial lines. Beneath the surface of the busing controversy lay deeper issues of class, power, and identity. Boston's neighborhoods—particularly working-class enclaves like South Boston ("Southie")—functioned almost as villages within the city, where neighbors knew neighbors for generations, attended the same parishes, and developed strong community bonds. Many residents viewed busing not just as racial integration but as an assault on their way of life imposed by distant elites who would never face the consequences of their decisions. Judge Garrity and other officials supporting busing lived in affluent suburbs with predominantly white schools untouched by the court order. The lead-up to September 1974 witnessed growing resistance. Anti-busing organizations formed, protest rallies grew larger, and politicians like Louise Day Hicks of the Boston School Committee became champions of "neighborhood schools." The city became increasingly polarized, with white working-class communities seeing themselves as victims of government overreach while black communities viewed busing as their children's long-overdue opportunity for equal education. As the first day of school approached, the city braced for confrontation that would capture national attention and leave scars that would take generations to heal.

Chapter 2: Mary Pat Fennessy: Life in South Boston Projects

Mary Pat Fennessy embodied the tough, resilient character of South Boston's public housing developments. At forty-two, she lived in Commonwealth, one of several housing projects in Southie that formed tight-knit, insular communities. A widow who had lost her first husband Dukie and had been abandoned by her second husband Kenny, Mary Pat worked multiple jobs to support herself and her seventeen-year-old daughter Jules. Her son Noel had died after returning from Vietnam and struggling with heroin addiction. The projects were places where everyone knew everyone's business, where neighbors helped neighbors, but also where conformity to community norms was strictly enforced. The daily rhythm of life in Commonwealth reflected both the solidarity and hardship of working-class existence. Residents struggled with unreliable utilities, cramped living conditions, and economic insecurity. When the power went out during the sweltering summer heat wave, it seemed emblematic of the precarious existence shared by the community. Mary Pat, like many of her neighbors, worked as a hospital aide at Meadow Lane Manor, cleaning bedpans and bathing elderly residents—work that was physically demanding and poorly paid but provided stable employment for women with limited education. Commonwealth had its own internal social hierarchy and unwritten rules. The community was proudly Irish-American and fiercely protective of its traditions. It was also a place where violence was normalized—Mary Pat herself had grown up fighting, both within her family and on the streets. This combative ethos shaped her worldview and her approach to conflict. When Jules went missing, Mary Pat's instinctive response was confrontation rather than cooperation with authorities. In Southie, problems were handled internally; outsiders, especially police and government officials, were viewed with deep suspicion. Mary Pat's existence was intimately connected to the criminal underworld of South Boston, particularly through her first husband Dukie's association with local crime boss Marty Butler. The Butler crew controlled much of Southie's illicit economy and enforced their own form of neighborhood "protection." While Mary Pat wasn't directly involved in crime, she understood its codes and hierarchies. This shadow governance system ran parallel to official authority and often held more sway over daily life in Southie than did legitimate government. When Mary Pat began investigating her daughter's disappearance, she found herself confronting this powerful network and the dark secrets it protected.

Chapter 3: The Path to Violence: From Prejudice to Tragedy

The racial attitudes that pervaded South Boston weren't formed in a vacuum but had deep roots in the community's history and social structure. For generations, Southie residents had defined themselves through their Irish-Catholic identity and their distinction from other groups. The community's insularity was both a defense mechanism against historical discrimination faced by Irish immigrants and a way to maintain cultural cohesion. Children grew up absorbing these attitudes not through explicit instruction but through everyday conversations, jokes, and casual expressions of prejudice that normalized the separation between "us" and "them." Educational segregation had been maintained through deliberate policies by the Boston School Committee that ensured neighborhood schools remained racially homogeneous. When forced integration loomed, many residents genuinely believed their way of life was under attack. Organizations like ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) and SWAB (Southie Women Against Busing) mobilized resistance, framing the issue not as one of racial equality but of neighborhood autonomy and parental rights. Anti-busing rallies featured inflammatory rhetoric that further intensified racial animosity, with chants of "Niggers suck!" and effigies of Judge Garrity burned in public demonstrations. The tragedy at Columbia Station represented the deadly culmination of these tensions. Auggie Williamson, a twenty-year-old Black man whose car broke down in Southie, encountered a group of white teenagers—George Dunbar, Ronald "Rum" Collins, Brenda Morello, and Jules Fennessy—who had been drinking and using drugs at Columbia Park. What began as harassment escalated into a chase into the subway station, where Auggie was fatally injured. The teens' actions weren't simply spontaneous but reflected deeply ingrained attitudes that dehumanized Black people and justified violence against them. The involvement of Frank Toomey, a feared enforcer for the Butler crew who was secretly involved with Jules, added another disturbing dimension. When he arrived at the scene and instructed the teens to "finish the job," he exemplified how adult authority figures in the community condoned and even encouraged racial violence. The tragedy revealed how prejudice, when combined with alcohol, group dynamics, and criminal influence, could transform ordinary teenagers into participants in a deadly hate crime. What happened to Auggie Williamson wasn't an isolated incident but the predictable outcome of a community culture that had normalized racial hatred and violence.

Chapter 4: Crossing Paths: Black and White Lives Intersected

The enforced separation between Boston's white and Black communities created environments where actual interactions across racial lines were rare and often fraught with tension. For Mary Pat, one of her few meaningful connections with someone Black was with her coworker Dreamy (Calliope Williamson) at the nursing home, though even this relationship remained superficial. When Mary Pat discovered that Dreamy was Auggie Williamson's mother, she was forced to confront the humanity of someone she had previously seen only through the lens of racial difference. Mary Pat's journey to Auggie Williamson's funeral marked a significant crossing of boundaries. Venturing into Mattapan, a predominantly Black neighborhood, she experienced the discomfort of being an outsider—the very discomfort that Black students would soon feel in South Boston's schools. At the funeral, she witnessed the raw grief of the Williamson family and heard Reverend Hartstone connect Auggie's death to a long history of racial violence. This experience challenged her previous assumptions and forced her to see Auggie not as an abstract "other" but as someone's child, much like her own Jules. The confrontation between Mary Pat and Reginald Williamson, Auggie's father, represented the collision of two parents' grief and rage. While Reginald saw Mary Pat as emblematic of the community that had killed his son, Mary Pat was seeking absolution or connection she couldn't articulate. Their interaction, followed by Mary Pat's conversation with Calliope, revealed how racial division created barriers to shared humanity even in moments of profound loss. Calliope's bitter words—"You raised a child who thought hating people because God made them a different shade of skin was okay"—forced Mary Pat to confront her own complicity in perpetuating prejudice. The investigation into Auggie's death revealed how the lives of Black and white Bostonians were more interconnected than most wanted to acknowledge. Detective Bobby Coyne, himself from working-class Dorchester, occupied a unique position between these worlds. His commitment to solving Auggie's murder regardless of racial politics demonstrated the possibility of transcending tribal loyalties, though his efforts met resistance from both communities. The case exposed how the criminal power structures in Southie, particularly Marty Butler's organization, profited from racial division while exploiting both communities through drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises.

Chapter 5: Vengeance and Justice: A Mother's Desperate Quest

When Mary Pat realized her daughter had been killed and her body concealed in the basement of Marty Butler's house, her grief transformed into a single-minded quest for vengeance. Despite receiving a bag of money from Butler intended to buy her silence and send her away, Mary Pat chose a different path. She became, in her own words, "a testament" rather than a person—a living embodiment of retribution. Her decision to remain in Southie and confront those responsible put her in direct opposition to the community's most dangerous figures. Mary Pat's investigation employed methods that blurred moral lines. She beat information out of Rum Collins, kidnapped and interrogated George Dunbar, and stole weapons and drugs from Butler's operation. In one of her most audacious acts, she discovered that Butler's crew was smuggling rifles to Black militants in Roxbury, intending to provoke violence at South Boston High on the first day of school integration. This revelation exposed the cynical manipulation behind the racial conflict—Butler's organization was actively stoking tensions for profit while publicly positioning themselves as defenders of the neighborhood. The quest for vengeance transformed Mary Pat herself. Once defined by her roles as mother and community member, she increasingly detached from these identities as she pursued her targets. Her conversation with Detective Coyne revealed her growing awareness of how she had participated in a system of lies that had ultimately destroyed her daughter. "My daughter's dead and Auggie Williamson's dead too because I sold my daughter lies," she confessed. This realization didn't deter her mission but added a dimension of atonement to her pursuit of revenge. Mary Pat's confrontation with Frank Toomey represented the culmination of her quest. Tracking him to his home, shooting him, and dragging him to Fort Independence for a final reckoning, she forced him to acknowledge his role in Jules's death. When Toomey revealed that Jules had shown mercy to Auggie Williamson by killing him quickly rather than allowing him to be tortured as Toomey had ordered, Mary Pat gained a final, tragic insight into her daughter's character. The revelation that Jules had tried to resist the cruelty of her peers, even in a limited way, provided Mary Pat with a small measure of redemption before her own violent end at the hands of Butler and his men.

Chapter 6: Beyond Hate: The Human Cost of Racial Division

The tragedy that unfolded in South Boston revealed how racial division exacts devastating human costs that extend far beyond the immediate victims. For the Williamson family, Auggie's death left not only grief but a profound sense of injustice. Calliope and Reginald Williamson had worked hard to create opportunities for their children, only to see their son killed for the simple act of being in the "wrong" neighborhood. Their pain was compounded by the knowledge that the legal system would likely fail to deliver meaningful justice, as crimes against Black victims rarely received the same attention or punishment as those against whites. The white teenagers involved in Auggie's death also paid a terrible price for their prejudice. Jules Fennessy's involvement led directly to her murder, while George Dunbar and Rum Collins faced legal consequences that would permanently alter their lives. Their actions that night weren't isolated incidents but the culmination of attitudes they had absorbed throughout their young lives. In a particularly revealing moment, Rum Collins expressed genuine bewilderment that anyone would care about "a nigger's" death, demonstrating how thoroughly he had internalized the dehumanization of Black people. The parents in both communities carried their own burdens of guilt and responsibility. Mary Pat's anguished realization that she had "sold her daughter lies" about race revealed how prejudice is transmitted across generations, often by people who don't recognize their own complicity. Meanwhile, Big Peg McAuliffe's stubborn refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing illustrated how many in Southie would choose defensive denial over painful self-examination. Detective Coyne's reflection that "all parents know failure" captured the universal struggle of trying to protect children in a world where violence and hatred often prevail. Beyond individual families, entire communities suffered from the corrosive effects of hatred. South Boston's fierce resistance to integration ultimately damaged its own social fabric. The neighborhood's insularity, once a source of strength and security, became a prison of ideology that prevented adaptation to changing social realities. Meanwhile, Black communities like Roxbury and Mattapan continued to bear the burden of systemic inequality, with young people like Auggie Williamson paying the ultimate price for venturing beyond invisible boundaries. The human cost of maintaining racial division proved far greater than any imagined benefit of keeping communities separate.

Chapter 7: Aftermath: Reckonings and Shattered Communities

The first day of school desegregation on September 12, 1974, arrived amid scenes of protest and violence that would define Boston's image nationally for years to come. As buses carrying Black students approached South Boston High School, they were met with crowds chanting racial slurs and hurling bricks and rocks. Inside the school, Black students discovered that not a single white student had attended—a boycott that protesters celebrated as "victory." What should have been an educational milestone became instead a flashpoint for racial animosity that would persist throughout the school year and beyond. Mary Pat Fennessy's death at Fort Independence came just hours before the school buses began rolling. Her final confrontation with Marty Butler and his crew ended in bloodshed that left her, Frank Toomey, and Brian Shea dead. Though Detective Coyne attempted to build a case against Butler for the killings, the crime boss's political connections and the circumstances surrounding Mary Pat's violent actions made prosecution unlikely. Butler had lost significant assets when Mary Pat burned his headquarters and exposed some of his operations, but his power in South Boston remained largely intact. The criminal investigation into Auggie Williamson's death yielded mixed results. Rum Collins and George Dunbar eventually confessed to their roles in the killing, though their legal punishments would be far less severe than if the racial dynamics had been reversed. Frank Toomey's involvement in ordering them to "finish the job" died with him, while Marty Butler's manipulation of racial tensions for profit remained largely hidden from public view. The justice system demonstrated once again its limitations in addressing racially motivated violence. For the communities involved, the aftermath brought little healing. South Boston remained defiantly resistant to integration, with white flight accelerating as families moved to suburbs or placed children in private schools. The neighborhood's working-class character gradually eroded as economic changes further marginalized those who remained. Black communities gained access to previously white schools but often found them hostile environments where true integration remained elusive. The deep divisions exposed during the busing crisis persisted for decades, with Boston earning a national reputation for racial hostility that would take generations to begin overcoming. Perhaps the most poignant aftermath came in unexpected connections. Ken Fen, Mary Pat's estranged husband, and Calliope Williamson, Auggie's mother, formed an unlikely bond through their shared grief, meeting for drinks after Mary Pat's funeral. Their quiet connection across racial lines suggested the possibility of healing that official policies had failed to achieve. Meanwhile, in a cemetery in Jamaica Plain, a caretaker named Winslow Jacobs fulfilled Mary Pat's final request by playing classical music in Jules's mausoleum each day, unwittingly creating a ritual of remembrance and reflection that transcended the hatred that had claimed so many lives.

Summary

The racial division that tore through Boston in 1974 revealed a fundamental truth about American society: prejudice exacts its greatest toll not through abstract policy debates but through the destruction of individual lives and communities. The deaths of Auggie Williamson and Jules Fennessy represented the human cost of maintaining artificial boundaries between people based solely on race. These boundaries were enforced not just through official segregation but through generations of taught hatred, community pressure, and criminal exploitation of tribal loyalties. The tragedy in South Boston demonstrated how racism corrupts everyone it touches—not just its direct victims, but also those who perpetuate it, even unknowingly. The enduring lesson from Boston's painful history is that healing racial division requires more than legal mandates or forced integration. It demands honest confrontation with how prejudice is transmitted across generations and maintained through community narratives that dehumanize "others." The small gesture of connection between Ken Fen and Calliope Williamson at the end of the story points toward the only viable path forward: recognizing shared humanity across racial lines and building relationships based on mutual respect rather than fear and antagonism. While systemic changes remain essential, true reconciliation begins with individual reckonings like Mary Pat's painful realization about the "lies" she had passed to her daughter. Only by acknowledging our complicity in systems of division can we begin to imagine communities defined by connection rather than separation.

About Author

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Eddie Joyce

Eddie Joyce was born and raised on Staten Island. He attended Harvard University and Georgetown University Law Center. Before he started writing, he was a criminal defense attorney for almost ten years. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

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