Kittie Knox
Kittie Knox was a mixed-race cyclist who used her skills as a seamstress and cyclist to challenge gender and racial perceptions taking over the League of American Wheelman in the 1890’s.
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Topic: Women
Women’s issues, suffrage, girls, anyone using she/her pronouns
Jane Jacobs
Jane Jacobs was a journalist, author, and activist who argued for the prioritization of people in urban planning projects.
Sarah Josepha Buell Hale
Sarah Josepha Hale was one of the most successful women in writing and publishing in nineteenth-century America, and her letters and editorials were instrumental to the creation of Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Hale is connected to the old West End because one of her poems, “Mary’s Lamb,” was set to music by Lowell Mason at the Bowdoin School.
Veda Borg
Veda Borg was born in the old West End, and became “Boston’s own” as an actor in many movies from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Mary Antin
Mary Antin, a Russian Jewish immigrant at the turn of the twentieth century, was a notable author who lived briefly in the tenements shared by immigrants in the old West End.
Rebecca Lee Crumpler
Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African-American woman to receive an M.D. degree, overcoming the dual discrimination of racism and sexism. She briefly resided on Joy Street at the north slope of Beacon Hill.