Hi ZZ:
Boston was a racist city. We had Irish, Italian, Blacks, Yankees Protestants who ran things, and a mishmash of other nationalities. Each group had their own neighborhoods but there was little need to 'defend' them. We had a Protestant living right down the street who we thought was quite exotic.
Starting in the late 1940's, Americanization really started to take hold in Boston. Decent jobs and schools became readily available, though it was still tough for a Catholic to get into Harvard or go into banking.
For all the liberalization one wants to attribute to themselves, the buck stops when it comes to your own children. Hence the busing fiasco, and white flight from metropolitan Boston to the suburbs. Regardless of all the social good it might accomplish, nobody wants to put his own kid into an inferior, never mind dangerous, school system.
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