 |
 A forum for Sharing new research discoveries on women in Boston history |
|
by Sylvia McDowell
The
Boston Women’s Heritage Trail has merely scratched the surface in dentifying
Boston women of note. Since the latest edition of the guide was published,
names are presented as candidates for inclusion regularly. Sylvia Garnett, longtime friend and Boston area resident, has proposed Amanda V. Houston’s name.
Mrs.Houston was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1926 at the New England Hospital for Women and Children (later renamed the Dimock Community Health Center.) Her mother Alice Marie had been trained as a nurse at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville, Florida. In 1919 she came to Boston in search of better employment opportunities to work as a live-in maid for the family of future Governor Alvin Fuller. Houston’s father Harold Averett was a native Bostonian. As a child she attended the Hyde School, an all-girls school grades one to eight, located on Hammond Street. During her early teenage years, her mother sent her to Florida in the quest for better educational opportunities. Mrs.Houston returned to Boston to enroll in Girls High, located at that time on West Newton Street in the South End. She supplemented educational activities through the many “Black History and Culture” programs sponsored by the community’s churches. Houston completed her undergraduate work at Northeastern University. Under the support of Simmons College, she completed the Management Development Program at Harvard Business School and in 1973 received a master’s degree in education from Harvard University.
A tireless educator, Mrs.Houston initiated programs to assist disadvantaged adults in seeking degrees at Northeastern University and local state colleges for Action for Boston Community Development. She worked as an admissions officer for Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, and developed and directed the Community Education Program at Simmons College teaching women on welfare survival strategies. In 1981, she was appointed director of the Black Studies Department at Boston College. According to Ruth Batson, also a Boston activist of note, she was ever concerned with helping students fund their education. From 1983 to 1989 she organized the “Blacks in Boston”conferences for Boston College to encourage the preservation, study, and understanding of the history of African Americans in New England. At the time of her death n1995, she was preparing the sixth conference in the series.
Along with her professional activities, Mrs.Houston was deeply involved in community activities. In one of her early jobs as an elevator operator, she organized other workers as a union. Later she was shop steward at Raytheon. Her early experience in the late 1950s as a neighborhood organizer combating vandalism and petty crime led to her appointment at ABCD. As a member of the administrative committee of the Roxbury Branch of the YWCA, she sat on the board of the Boston YWCA and was instrumental in the transition of the Roxbury Branch into ASWALOS House which delivers support services to women of color. She organized the Homesteaders Neighborhood Association, a neighborhood association organized to fight crime, neglect, drugs, and disinvestment in the area where she lived and the Area 12 Neighborhood Association which helped in stabilizing and improving the neighborhood abutting Washington Park. She helped plan and develop the St.Joseph ’s Cooperative Homes and the Shelburne Recreation Center.
Mrs.Houston was the recipient of several awards including those granted by Harvard Graduate School of Educa- tion, Morgan Memorial Goodwill Associates, and the Roxbury Action Program. She was the recipient of the New England Hospital-Dimock Community Health Center’s Salute to Women Pioneers Award, and the Museum of Afro-American History’s Community Leaders Award. Boston College initiated The Amanda V. Houston Fellowship Award, a travel support grant for undergraduate students of African descent, in her honor upon her retirement as director of BC’s Black Studies Department.
Ruth Batson says that Mrs.Houston was involved in many activities: “Anything good, Amanda was part of it.”
A lifelong resident of Roxbury, Mrs. Houston died legally blind of a heart attack August 18,1995. Her many contri- butions to society are yet to be documented and celebrated.
| Welcome New Members!!
Suzy Becker Edith De Angelis Linda Giles Katherine Kraft Heidi Meyer John Naughton Jr. Myanna Pontoppidan Ruth Roper Wellesley Centers for Women Renewals Susan Garber Margaret Howland Nathaniel Young |
 
 |