On the front page of today's Boston Globe.
I never knew Mr. Williams before this....I wish I had. What a man he was.
Darryl Williams died yesterday.
Darryl had every reason to complain and hate. And yet he never complained and he never hated.
Our city was five years into school desegregation and tensions were still running high when Williams and his mostly-black Jamaica Plain teammates went to Charlestown for a high school football game Sept. 28, 1979. Darryl, a sophomore, had just caught his first varsity pass and was standing in the end zone with his teammates at halftime when he was felled by a bullet in the back of the neck. The shot came from a projects rooftop across the street. Three beered-up white teens later said they were shooting at pigeons, but everybody knew what they were really doing. Mayor Kevin White immediately said the crime was “racially motivated.’’ Three days later, Pope John Paul II prayed for Darryl on Boston Common.
http://www.boston.com/sports/schools/football/articles/2010/03/29/darryl_williams_shooting_victim_who_rose_above_hatred_dead_at_46