Eugene F. Rivers III still chuckles at what he says was his best quip ever--the time he called Du Bois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "the emcee at the Cotton Club on the Charles."

Those kinds of remarks are part and parcel of why many call Rivers, a Dorchester minister leading the fight against gang violence in the area, Gates' most severe and most persistent critic.

For years, Rivers has labeled Gates and other members of the "black elite intelligentsia" as ivory tower intellectuals who do little other than engage in theoreticals, far removed from the facts of life in poor black communities.

His first formal criticism came in a 1992 Boston Review essay, in which he challenged black intellectuals to take on more activist roles in the black community.

The debate continued at a Kennedy School forum later that same year, called "The responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Crack." Panelists included Gates, Rivers and Fletcher Jr. University Professor Cornel West.

Rivers penned another essay in 1995 calling for the formulation of what he called an "activist research agenda." Rivers says the call went unheeded, though Gates had always professed his respect for Rivers.

Relations between Gates and Rivers were commonly acknowledged to be strained--several articles mentioned their strained rapport.

But with the October inauguration of the Martin Luther King, Jr. after-school program, a cooperative effort between Rivers and Gates targeting digital illiteracy among Dorchester youth, that characterization seems poised to change.