Editing Mandela, Massachusetts (section)

== Referendums in 1986==
The proposal to create Mandela sought to carve out a new, 12-square-mile city in the heart of Boston, which would comprise about 22 percent of Boston's 600,000 population, including most of its black residents.

The '''Greater Roxbury Incorporation Project''' ('''GRIP''') were the sponsors of the Mandela initiative; the co-leaders of the GRIP campaign were journalist and filmmaker [[Andrew Philemon Jones]] and architect Curtis Davis. [[Mel King]] was also a proponent, and ran in 1983 as mayoral candidate against then city council member, [[Raymond Flynn]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|date=2017-09-13|title=Mandela, MA and the bid to separate from Boston|url=https://www.baystatebanner.com/2017/09/13/mandela-ma-and-the-bid-to-separate-from-boston/|access-date=2020-08-18|website=The Bay State Banner}}</ref>

Other community-based organizations in Boston doing work around local Black and Brown residents' land control included the [[Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative]] (DSNI) and [[Greater Roxbury Neighborhood Authority]] (GRNA).

Jones said that Black neighborhoods had "a colonial relationship with the city of Boston" because they were not given adequate public funds. Opponents, including some of Boston's black ministers, Roxbury state representative [[Thomas Finneran]] and Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, claimed the new municipality would undermine gains and create a community with annual deficit of $135 million.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Butterfield|first=Fox|date=October 12, 1986|title=Bostonians Debating Drive to Carve Out a Black City|work=New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/12/us/bostonians-debating-drive-to-carve-out-a-black-city.html|access-date=17 August 2020}}</ref>

A non-binding referendum question about succession appeared on the ballot in 1986, on November 4. Nearly 50,000 people voted in the referendum.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|last1=Miletsky|first1=Zebulon|last2=González|first2=Tomás|date=2016-09-22|title="Separatist City": The Mandela, Massachusetts (Roxbury) Movement and the Politics of Incorporation, Self-Determination, and Community Control, 1986–1988|url=https://scholarworks.umb.edu/trotter_review/vol23/iss1/8|journal=Trotter Review|volume=23|issue=1|issn=2373-7743}}</ref> The proposal failed, with 73 percent voting against it. The measure did not win in any precinct, and fared worst in the predominantly Black neighborhoods.