Newsmaker: Quincy man plans to unite community through role at King Boston
Name: Gregory Ball
Age: 49
Hometown: Dorchester
In the news: Ball started as director of embrace ideas at King Boston last month.
Now you know: Ball loves to listen to all kinds of music, primarily hip-hop and R and B, and wrote a series of stories spotlighting hip-hop artists for DigBoston.
His story: Engaging and bringing people together are the actions at the core of Gregory Ball's efforts to implement his new role as "director of embrace ideas" at King Boston, a nonprofit working with the City of Boston to create a memorial and programs to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and and Coretta Scott King.
Ball, a Quincy resident, recently accepted the new position at the organization, which aims to carry on the legacy and work of King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, through the creation of a new memorial, called The Embrace, as well as other social justice programs.
"If anything that we've learned over the past year, we need other," he said. "And I mean we as a country, as people — all of us. We need each other. And we need all the talent we got to fight the problems that are facing us."
Ball grew up in Dorchester and was active in the musical community, working as a music journalist and creating an online media platform, KillerBoomBox, to highlight Black music and lifestyle news.
Before his move to King Boston, Ball was working at Berkshire Bank on opening community work spaces for entrepreneurs in areas of need. The first work space opened in Roxbury about a year ago, Ball said.
Ball said great leadership at the bank opened his eyes to community-focused work as opposed to commercial work, which eventually led him to King Boston.
Now, in his work on the programming side of the organization, Ball said he aspires to create an environment that invites people with a diverse set of backgrounds and expertise to connect and carry out the work of King — from educators to artists to those working in criminal justice.
Ball said that his work at King Boston is the "perfect synergy" of all of his expertise and experiences, from content creation to working in the corporate world.
"We'll be trying to engage in different ways on how to do the work," Ball said. "I think we get caught up in thinking that there' s only way to approach trying to change the world. I think what we're trying to do is have a multi-pronged approach, where we include the arts as a part of that and people's appreciation of the arts."
Ball, who said that one of his talents is bringing people together, not only wants to engage with the community and those with different talents, but wants to do so in a way that is different from than what other organizations are doing.
"I think the thing that I would probably want people to know is that we are definitely in this fight together," Ball said. "We would love for them to come and support and be a part of the things we are doing."
Eventually, Ball said he hopes to eventually host in-person events, but in the meantime he hosted the first virtual book club event in Dec., where participants discussed, "My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies," by Resmaa Menakem, which looks at the effects of racism on the body, Ball said.
Ball said he saw people of all different backgrounds sharing their experiences.
"The one thing that was so, so beautiful about it was the empathy that people were expressing for one another," Ball said. "And that empathy and connection. . . That's the foundation of us getting things on the right track."
King Boston will also be putting out a virtual program, called Voices on King, in partnership with the Museum of Fine Arts. Artists, members of nonprofits and others in the community will give five-minutes talks on the impact of the Kings' work and legacy on their own work.
The prerecorded interviews, performances and poetry will go live on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — Jan 18. Ball said he also plans to announce upcoming program for Black History Month featuring Black college presidents and the role of higher education post-pandemic.