[1][2][3] The districts, including parts of Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan and the South End, were populated mainly by African-Americans and Latinos, and the movement was driven by Black community leaders.

[6] Activists gathered in the summer of 1984 to discuss remedies to the imbalance of power they perceived between communities within the greater city of Boston, as it had expanded through annexations in the 19th century.

Leaders spoke of the relationship between Black residents and City Hall as that of a "colony," in an era when apartheid in the Republic of South Africa, notions of community control were under discussion, and a decade after the upheavals created in Boston by efforts at school desegregation and busing.

Mel King was also a proponent, and ran in 1983 as mayoral candidate against then city council member, Raymond Flynn.

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.