How one community in Boston went from one of the highest crime rates to zero juvenile homicides.

CLARENCE PAGE: When you see what some of our kids are doing to each other, you have to wonder, in the way Marvin Gay once did: what's going on?

What's going on when little kids are carrying big weapons and shooting them at each other? In black America, for example, the biggest killers of young black males are other young black males killing more each year than the Klan ever did its entire history.

I wondered what movement would liberate us this time, who would help the poor left behind by the civil rights movement - more isolated than ever - not only from the white mainstream but also from the black middle class. What movement is there for them?

There's not much left here in our city's poorest neighborhoods - few factories, few jobs, not much left but liquor stores and churches - always the church. Find black folks you'll find a church. Africa married America in the black church and gave birth to a new music, a new culture, a new liberation movement. Earlier movements grew out of the church. Can the next big movement come out of here too? Will it look like this?

CLARENCE PAGE: This is the Azusa Christian Community in Boston's Dorchester district - poor, black, and plagued for years with crime and youth violence. Rev. Eugene Rivers made it out of the Philadelphia ghetto, went to Harvard, and now he's back here in Boston's ghetto using God - or as he might say - letting God use him to fight the gangs. This is the Boston miracle. In 1996, this former murder capital didn't have a single juvenile homicide - zero. That sharp reduction didn't come just because of Rev. Rivers, but he helped. Amazingly enough, so did a local drug dealer.

REV. EUGENE RIVERS: What this young man stated was that he said, look, it's not nuclear physics. When Johnny goes to school in the morning, I'm there, you're not - talking to the clergy and older adults. When Johnny comes home from school in the afternoon, I'm there, you're not. When Johnny is sent out for a loaf of bread from the corner store for Grandma, I'm there, you're not; I win, you lose.

CLARENCE PAGE: The prescription then sounded simple. The drug dealers could be there. Why not the ministers? Rivers and other ministers took the hint. They put together the "10 Point Coalition" to fill a void in their children's lives and take back their community block by block, street by street.

REV. EUGENE RIVERS: You can make a difference in your life. If you're interested in doing some athletics, anything, please, we will struggle to find something to get you plugged into so you're not wasting your life, waiting to get shot, knocked up, or locked up.

CLARENCE PAGE: They made a deal with the mayor and the police. Racial tensions had divided Bostonians for years, so they determined to de-racialize crime, simply take race out of the crime issue, beginning with a cop who once knocked Rivers' front door down chasing a drug suspect.

DETECTIVE MERNER : We encountered a heroin dealer that night coming down Ripley Road. He was smoking a joint. He was one of the major players up in the area. We attempted to stop him, and he ran from us, jumped a fence and ran up to Rev. Rivers's front door to gain access to Rev. Rivers's house, at which time the door was opened, the individual attempted to slam the door behind him. We did not know it was the Reverend's house, and we did not stop running as the door was being closed, so the door was forced open.

REV. EUGENE RIVERS: It was - to put it mildly - a confrontation. From 1988 to about '92 it was a fairly conflictual relationship. However, my recognition - after my house was shot up on the first time - all right - that some of the kids needed to get locked up, and that there was no nonsense about that - resulted me moving in the direction of Detective Merner, who accurately understood that there were bad players who needed to get locked down.

CLARENCE PAGE: The ministers told the police, we will help you arrest the truly bad apples, the worst youth offenders, if you'll give us the rest, the wannabes, the kids who are at risk but still can be saved.

REV. EUGENE RIVERS: One out of every ten kids is off the hook and needs to have his addressed changed and incarcerated or something. Now, nine of those kids are good. Let's cut the deal. We will do the heavy lifting on the nine kids. You take that bad one, and we won't ask too many questions.

CLARENCE PAGE: Probation officers came out from behind their desks. They enforced curfews, not to lock kids up but to take them home where the officers found out firsthand why some kids feel safer on the streets than they did at home.

REV. EUGENE RIVERS: Now, let me ask you this. If you were -

CLARENCE PAGE: These kids have gotten into minor trouble. They've been referred here to get the message that they can still save their own lives. The ministers and the community will help if only the kids will listen.

TEENAGER: -- when I got shot - and they're watchin' me every day - every time I come outside, I see a new car in front of my -

CLARENCE PAGE: Like most teens they sound cocky, self-assured, as if to mask their fears about their own future.

CLARENCE PAGE: Conservatives like Rivers because he calls for self-help. Liberals like Rivers because he says the community can't do the job all by themselves; they need government help, not as an occupying force but as an ally. Across America churches are doing a lot more than praying these days. They run schools and day care. They build houses and apartments. They counsel kids and mentor entire families. Welfare reform now allows the states to work with churches to help local neighborhoods, which has touched off a new debate over church/state separation. How closely can the church and the state work together without sparking a constitutional crisis? Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the right question is how closely can people of goodwill work together to minister, mentor, motivate, and monitor our youth? Working apart, there's not much they can do, Rev. Rivers said, but working together, there's nothing they can't do. Perhaps then church ministers like Gene Rivers can give birth to yet another liberation movement and rescue the neighborhood buried inside every ghetto struggling to be free.

REV. EUGENE RIVERS: In our community we've got to set a standard so that homicide is not cool. You can't shoot another brother and everybody know that ain't nobody gonna talk, because then it's not about the police; it's about quality of life in that community because we think so little of ourselves that we can shoot each other and no one's going to be held accountable for it. Talk to me about that.