Roxbury

Roxbury Women’s History Trail: “Stepping Back- Revised”

Stepping Back, the Roxbury Women’s History Trail, is the fourth in a series of walks which was developed under the auspices of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail by teachers and students in the Boston Public Schools. This walk was originally developed by first and second graders in Mary Smoyer and Alma Wright’s classes at the William Monroe Trotter School in Roxbury. After gathering names of important local women, the students interviewed the woman herself, or a family member, or an expert on the woman. They walked through the neighborhood, chose a name for the walk, and designed the logo, and produced a coloring book celebrating the trail women. 

In 2017, board members of BWHT gathered to revise the Roxbury tour to update it and provide a look into the rich history of the Black and Jewish women who lived in and around Roxbury, as well as Dorchester, those who participated in civic, educational, political, and social activities that helped to change the landscape, as well as the social and political focus within their communities. These women served as activists within agencies, businesses, and religious establishments as well as setting a tone for social action and social justice from the late nineteenth century until the present day.

We introduce this trail with a brief overview of the African American and Jewish communities in Boston. For the first two hundred years, until about 1840, a very few Sephardic Jews came through Boston, but were not welcome and did not settle here. In 1840 the first wave of Jews immigrated from Central Europe, settling in the South End. In 1880 the second and largest wave of Jews arrived from Eastern Europe, settling in the North End, then moving to the West End and the North Slope of Beacon Hill. Later they moved to the South End, Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Finally in the 1950s and early 1960s Jews began moving to working class cities just outside Boston like Malden, Quincy, Revere, and Somerville, and to suburbs such as Brookline, Newton, Randolph, Sharon, and Swampscott. 

The first Africans arrived in Boston in 1638 on slave ships. In 1783 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts abolished slavery. Meanwhile a small free African American population lived in the North End from the 17th to the 19th century. By the 1800s a large group of free Blacks had settled in the West End and on the North Slope of Beacon Hill. The African Americans then moved in much the same pattern as the Jews to the South End, then Roxbury, and now also live in Dorchester and Mattapan. In the 1940s and 1950s Roxbury became the center of African American culture in Boston. 

Relations between the two communities have always had both aspects: as allies and as adversaries. Changes continue to this day. This trail tells the stories and backgrounds of the many women who lived here, Jewish and African American, immigrants from other countries, as well as whites who appreciate the history, beauty, and proximity of this neighborhood. The stops on the trail represent where the women lived or worked during a period of their lives, although the sites may now look very different from the way they did when the women were alive and contributing to these storied neighborhoods. 

 This trail is a project of Boston Women’s Heritage Trail – researched and written by Cheryl Brown-Greene, Helaine Davis, Ferna Phillips, Mary Smoyer, Linda Stern and Alma Wright.