Amanda Houston (1926-1995), born Amanda Verdell Averett, received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northeastern University. While a student, she ran an elevator in the Park Square Building and helped the other operators, all Black women, obtain benefits from the building’s owners. She served as shop steward at a local branch of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Houston played an active role in the wave of social and economic initiatives which emerged in the 1960s. Among her achievements, she founded and directed the New Careers Program at ABCD (Action for Boston Community Development) to help women get off welfare and into college, the Homesteaders Neighborhood Association, a tenants and homeowners group in Roxbury, and later served as a program director at Action for Boston Community Development. She also worked at Simmons College and Boston College and taught in their Black Studies programs.
