Letter to Judge Garrity from Jamaica Plain Resident

Dublin Core

Title

Letter to Judge Garrity from Jamaica Plain Resident

Subject

Boston (Mass.)
Boston Public Schools
Garrity, W. Arthur (Wendell Arthur), 1920-1999
School integration--Massachusetts--Boston--History
Segregation in education--Law and legislation--United States--History

Description

Letter from Jamaica Plain resident, who complained that "colored" people "changed the face of Roxbury."

Creator

Name Redacted

Source

Wendell Arthur Garrity papers on the Boston Schools Desegregation Case, 1972-1997.

Publisher

University Archives and Special Collections of the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Date

October 5, 1974

Contributor

Maranan, Vini

Rights

This item is made available for research and educational purposes by the University of Massachusetts Boston. Rights status is not evaluated. Copyright information can be found online at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Relation

Wendell Arthur Garrity papers on the Boston Schools Desegregation Case, 1972-1997. View the finding aid for more related materials.

Format

PDF (Computer file format)

Language

English

Type

Text

Identifier

Garrity 02_Redacted.pdf

Text Item Type Metadata

Text

[Redacted]
Jamaica Plain, Mass, 02130
Oct. 5, 1974
Judge Arthur Garrity
Federal Court House
Boston, Mass
Dear Judge,
I partially agree with the people in South Boston about not wanting the colored in their schools because I have seen first hand how their (the blacks) presence changed the face of Roxbury. I am not talking about all of Roxbury, since I don’t know it first-hand but about Mission Hill, section of Roxbnury which I know very well since I lived on Mission Hill for eighteen years and in the project behind Mission Church for the next ten. I never saw or heard before what I did once the colored people moved in. I myself was held up and assaulted by them four times, the first of which required hospitalization. I begged my mother to move out of that section after this first incident but she was so attached to Mission Church that she refused. (Maybe I was more attached because Mission Grammar and High School had helped an awful lot in bringing me up but I know I had the character to face the present situation regardless of how much it meant to me) It got increasingly worse until finally a lot of businesses moved out and Whiting Milk Co. refused to let their men deliver on Mission Hill because their men were continually assaulted and robbed. So I can understand South Boston’s plight now. They (the colored people) made a hell-hole of Mission Hill so let them stay there. It was fine before they came.

Files

Citation

Name Redacted, “Letter to Judge Garrity from Jamaica Plain Resident,” Stark & Subtle Divisions: A Collaborative History of Segregation in Boston, accessed March 28, 2024, https://bosdesca.omeka.net/items/show/105.

Geolocation