White won the mayoral office in the 1967 general election in a hard-fought campaign opposing the anti-busing and anti-desegregation Boston School Committee member Louise Day Hicks.

White was credited with revitalizing the waterfront, downtown and financial districts of Boston, and transforming Quincy Market into a metropolitan and tourist destination.

The incumbent secretary, Joseph D. Ward, decided to run for governor that year (and lost to John A. Volpe in the general election).

[6][7][8] White successfully ran for the open mayoral office in 1967, winning his first election with a coalition of Italian, liberal and black voters.

White narrowly defeated Hicks, who had taken a staunchly anti-busing (de facto anti-desegregation) position as a member of the Boston School Committee.

[6][7] Two years later, in 1969, Hicks was elected to the Boston City Council by large majorities, and then in 1970 to Congress, winning the open district formerly held by retiring U.S. House Speaker John W. McCormack after defeating Joseph Moakley by 10% in the multi-candidate Democratic primary.

Hicks in 1972 would lose her congressional seat by two percentage points and 3,428 votes in a post-census revised district and a four-candidate general election that included a rematch with Moakley running as an Independent.

[11] In the 1975 mayoral election, White barely defeated State Senator Joe Timilty, the year after the start of court-ordered school desegregation and busing.

[5][6] In the fourth month of White's first term, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, touching off disturbances in the African-American Roxbury section of Boston that same evening which did not spread to other parts of the city.

[6] White's chief of police was concerned about allowing 15,000 people to attend the concert so close to downtown, saying he didn't think he could keep the city safe.

[9][15][16] On such short notice, Atkins and White administrators persuaded Brown and Boston's public television station, WGBH-TV, to broadcast the concert.

[6][15] The White administration also appealed to community leaders to help keep the peace, and also encouraged people to stay home and watch the concert on television.

White appeared on stage with James Brown to appeal to the audience, and to the entire city via television, to remember and maintain King's peaceful vision.

— Kevin White from the stage of Boston Garden[18]WGBH immediately rebroadcast the concert twice more that night, and people apparently stayed inside to continue watching it.

[16] White secured $60,000 from the Boston City Council to make up for the loss of ticket revenue to the performers resulting from his efforts to discourage attendance at the close-to-downtown arena at this volatile moment.

[20] White administration staff member, and subsequent Boston City Council President, Bruce Bolling, describes a leadership vacuum on the issue of race, and that for many years "the established institutions—the City Council, the School Committee, the mayor, the business community, the philanthropic community, the religious community—no one weighed in in any responsible way to address this issue of school desegregation.

[6] On April 1, 1965, a special committee appointed by Massachusetts Education Commissioner Owen Kiernan released its final report finding that more than half of black students enrolled in Boston Public Schools (BPS) attended institutions with enrollments that were at least 80 percent black and that housing segregation in the city had caused the racial imbalance.

[33] On May 25, 1971, the Massachusetts State Board of Education voted unanimously to withhold state aid from the Boston Public Schools due to the School Committee's refusal to use the district's open enrollment policy to relieve the city's racial imbalance in enrollments, instead routinely granting white students transfers while doing nothing to assist black students attempting to transfer.

[43] On June 14, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (1969–1986) unanimously declined to review the School Committee's appeal of the Phase II plan.

During one demonstration outside Boston City Hall, black lawyer and businessman Ted Landsmark was attacked with an American flag by a white teenager.

[21][53][54] In 1972, White made news when the Rhode Island State Police arrested members of The Rolling Stones immediately prior to a concert appearance in the Boston Garden.

That evening, a riot was underway in the South End and White needed to move police officers from the Garden to address the disturbance.

[55] Fearing unrest among the 15,000 concertgoers if the Stones were not permitted to perform, White persuaded the Rhode Island authorities to release the band members into his personal custody, enabling them to make their scheduled concert appearance in Boston.

His administration was instrumental in the renovation and renewal of Quincy Market which reopened in 1976, transforming an eyesore and run-down series of warehouses and open stalls into a "festival marketplace" that was subsequently copied by other cities.

[58] On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968 including Titles VIII and IX introduced by Massachusetts U.S.

[65] By March 31, 1970, more than 1,300 minority families bought homes with B-BURG mortgages with the vast majority being steered into the Jewish neighborhoods of Mattapan (where the black population increased from 473 in 1960 to 19,107 in 1970), while approximately 15,000 people in total found new residences during the first 20 months of the program.

[67] Prior to White's final term in office, Suffolk County and federal prosecutors were investigating a few mid-level city officials.

Weld's office issued charges of fraudulent disability pensions, bribery, extortion, and perjury that were the downfall of more than 20 city employees, including a number of key individuals in White's political machine, and nearly as many businessmen.

[22] After a number of better-known politicians, including Senators Ted Kennedy and Gaylord Nelson, and Governor Reubin Askew, turned down the position, White briefly became the front-runner for the post.

Ultimately, the vice presidential nominee was former Peace Corps head, Chicago School Board President, and later Ambassador Sargent Shriver, who had married into the Kennedy family.