A Boston Suburb Removed Italian Flag Colors From a Street. Residents Rebelled.

Every year in mid-July, a scene straight out of an Italian village unfolds in a tight-knit neighborhood of Newton, Mass. A boisterous procession of residents parades down the middle of Adams Street at night, carrying lit candles and pulling a statue of the Blessed Virgin in a cart.

For 90 years, the street had a centerline painted red, white and green — the colors of the Italian flag — in a nod to the many Italian Americans in the neighborhood, Nonantum, and their annual festival.

Then, one night last month, the city sent a crew to replace the tricolor line with standard reflective yellow stripes. Newton’s mayor said the change was made to improve traffic safety, citing an analysis that found Adams Street had a higher-than-average number of crashes.

To some Nonantum residents, it was an assault on their heritage — especially given the timing, three weeks before the start of their beloved festival.

“These lines are not just paint, they are sacred symbols of Italian American pride, religious tradition and community identity,” the St. Mary of Carmen Society, the local group that holds the festival, wrote in a statement. The city’s action, it added, was “a slap in the face.”

Newton, a suburb of Boston known for liberal politics, pricey real estate and highly regarded schools, is made up of nine “villages,” each with its own identity. Nonantum has long been a neighborhood where immigrants settle. Irish and French Canadians came in the first half of the 19th century, followed by Italian and Jewish immigrants in the 1880s, said Jordan Lee Wagner, a longtime resident who has studied local history.

Some took it personally when the city replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day, bristling at a perceived insult to Italian Americans.

For them, the removal of the red, white and green from Adams Street felt like a particularly pointed insult, said Fran Yerardi, who previously ran an Italian restaurant and now has a real estate business in Nonantum. He said many residents were already frustrated by changes that they see as eroding the character of their neighborhood, including proposals for new housing and other development.

“It used to be a working-class neighborhood, where people were gardeners and housekeepers,” Mr. Yerardi said. “Now they’re building $4 million condos, and the original people are being pushed out.”

The encroachment goes beyond real estate, he added: “As the community gentrifies, we get more pushback on our traditions and blue-collar mentality. We’re praying to a saint in the street — it doesn’t fit, in one of the richest towns in Massachusetts.”

Erin O’Brien, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston who has studied shifting political dynamics in Boston and the surrounding region, said the strong sentiments in both Nonantum and the North End reflect the complicated history of Italian Americans.

“Italian Americans in the Boston area still understand themselves as immigrants who came over and were treated incredibly poorly, and that is historically accurate,” she said. “But Italians and Irish have ascended for a long time, and now, with demographic changes, they have to share their power.”

She acknowledged the loss on Adams Street as something meaningful, a joyful element of local landscape and identity for 90 years. But, she added, “This isn’t just about paint — it’s a symbol that resonates around who has power.”

The angst is not unique to Boston. In New York City last week, Italian Americans protested outside the office of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, after an old photo resurfaced of him giving the middle finger to a Columbus statue.

Outraged by the line’s erasure, some in Nonantum chose to escalate the conflict. Dozens showed up for a protest outside City Hall. On the eve of the Italian American festival, some residents of the neighborhood took to the street in the middle of the night and repainted the tricolor stripe over segments of the new yellow line.

One of the paintbrush-wielding scofflaws was detained by the police, who said they would charge him with defacing or damaging city property.

Mayor Ruthanne Fuller of Newton — who, like Mayor Wu in Boston, is the first woman to lead her city — has stood by her decision to paint the line yellow. The change, she has said, was required under federal regulations and was urgently needed to address a high rate of accidents on the street.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Fuller, a Democrat who is not seeking re-election, said she was not available for an interview last week. In written answers to The New York Times’s questions, the mayor said the city had communicated with festival leaders “over many months” about the need for a yellow line on Adams Street and had agreed to let volunteers repaint the red, white and green stripes on the street somewhere to the side of the yellow line.

The city made its decision “thoughtfully,” the mayor wrote, “understanding that we could simultaneously improve public safety while maintaining the neighborhood’s long traditions.”

Residents, who said they were given no warning about the line’s removal, were not appeased by the offer to move their colors to the side. Mr. Wagner was convinced that the proliferating lines in the street would confuse and endanger drivers. Mr. Yerardi feared the Italian flag colors would end up “in the gutter.”

Mr. Wagner, who is Jewish, said a long history of friendship between Jews and Italians in Nonantum made him deeply protective of his neighbors. Irked by the city’s action, and eager to repay past kindnesses, he issued a mild-mannered call to action on his Facebook page.

“It seems that we should just go out and paint,” he wrote the day before the festival began. “What can they do? Arrest us?”

After others took him up on his suggestion that night, Mr. Wagner felt compelled to join the next day, pushing a long-handled roller dipped in green paint down the middle of Adams Street. The police did not try to stop him.

“Some people thought it was an Italian thing,” he said of the old red, white and green line. “They didn’t understand it was a neighborhood thing.”

Other critics of the mayor’s action include a former Massachusetts transportation secretary, Gina Fiandaca, who is Italian American. She wrote in a letter to the Boston Herald that the city’s claim that the yellow line was needed for safety “lacks merit.”

Residents, too, have challenged the accuracy of the traffic analysis cited by the mayor. The mayor said another study will be done later this year.

There was no shortage of ethnic spirit in Nonantum’s streets last Sunday, the final night of the festival, as residents of diverse backgrounds partied in driveways and backyards under strings of twinkling red, white and green lights. Crosswalks, fire hydrants and numerous side streets bore stripes in the three colors. “Stop Italian Hate in America,” read a yard sign on one lawn.

The start of the five-day festival had felt overshadowed by unrest. By the end, after the renegade painters had covered most of the new centerline on Adams Street with their own handiwork, elation took over, said Mr. Yerardi.

“It became a rebellion, the people against the government,” he said. “So what does the mayor do now?”

Pressed on his question, the mayor said the yellow line would be restored.