Topic: Women
Women’s issues, suffrage, girls, anyone using she/her pronouns
At the age of five, Sarah Roberts was at the center of a lawsuit against racially segregated public schools in Boston in 1847. Roberts, a Black girl, was denied the equal right to attend the public school of her choice, forced instead to walk past five public schools to the Black-only Abiel Smith School in the old West End.
Marilyn Hurvitz, an eleven-year-old girl of Polish descent in the West End, took pride in growing a vegetable garden that was ordinarily inaccessible in tenement life.
Harrison & Sally Otis Harrison Grey Otis was a major political and business figure in Boston during the Federalist Period. He is best known as a supporter of Charles Bulfinch, as Boston’s third mayor, and as a leader of the Hartford Convention. His wife, Sally, was a skilled socialite and hostess, who provided significant support for…
One of the West End’s most prominent settlement houses, the EPH served as a community center, education space, and more for more than half a century in the West End, and continues its work today in Somerville.
The West End Woman Suffrage League connected African-American leaders in the old West End to the larger movement for women’s suffrage in Boston, the rest of New England, and the country as a whole.
The history of urban renewal in the West End is well-known, and locals are familiar with names of the “last West Enders” who refused to leave their neighborhood. As the aftermath of urban renewal lives with us today, there are a few ways to look at “the last” of the old neighborhood.
The Williams Sisters occupied the Otis House in the mid 19th century, operating the grand Bulfinch Mansion as a boarding house.
Eva Whiting White was Director of the Elizabeth Peabody House for nearly 3 decades from 1922 to 1950.
