When the South End was the South End

Volumes could be written about the South End's black history. Here's my attempt to do it in 800 words.

In 1638, a ship named Desire-no relation to a streetcar named Desire-arrived in Boston, carrying cotton, tobacco, and slaves. Many of the slaves settled in Boston, gained their freedom, and thrived. According to the first U.S. Census, 1790, there were 766 blacks in Boston, many living on the north slope of Beacon Hill.

When ward lines changed and wooden houses were torn down in the 1890s, black Bostonians began moving from Beacon Hill to the Columbus, Tremont and Mass. Ave. area of the South End and what we call Lower Roxbury. Many were "Black Brahmins," frequently written up in society columns.

Mrs John Lewis and Mrs Phoebe Glover of Columbus av are the leaders of the South End set. (Boston Sunday Globe, "Sets in Colored Society, 1894).

A black community near Back Bay railroad station also thrived. When a new station was built in 1897, many Buckingham Street homes were demolished, and these prosperous black homeowners moved to the suburbs.

By 1910, the new South End/Lower Roxbury neighborhood, with its better housing stock and proximity to jobs, particularly on the railroad, was home to 7000 blacks; in another decade, it would become the center of Boston's black community. Omar McRoberts quotes the Our Boston magazine: "Here...is where the first "Colored" business district developed between Northampton and Ruggles Streets, chiefly on Tremont St....It is here that there are established not only the businesses, but most of the churches, and social welfare organizations."

During War World I, Black Brahmin women organized the Women's Service Club and the League of Women for Community Service, separate South End clubs with similar missions. Mary Evans Wilson, of 13 Rutland Square, whose lawyer husband, Butler, was president of the NAACP's Boston branch (the oldest in the country), was instrumental in starting the Women's Service Club; Maria Baldwin, headmistress of Cambridge's Agassiz School, the League. The clubs' headquarters became known by their Mass. Ave. addresses-the Women's Service Club as "464" and the League as "558."

West Indians, primarily from Jamaica and Barbados, had begun immigrating to the South End at the beginning of the century. Between 1915 and 1940, Southern blacks came north and also settled in the South End. Neither group was warmly welcomed by the Black Brahmins.

By this time, there were many black doctors, dentists, and pharmacists practicing in the South End. Dr. Garland had his Plymouth Hospital on East Springfield Street; the College of Physicians and Surgeons at 517-519 Shawmut Avenue (an empty lot now being developed) was graduating doctors (some faculty helped found Tufts Medical School). Later, Shag and Bal Taylor held forth at their legendary Lincoln Pharmacy and after-hours Pioneer Club. Shag was said to be associated with James Michael Curley; under his political influence many black Republicans (the party of Abraham Lincoln) became Democrats.

According to Amanda Houston, by 1936, the black community "sustained two weekly newspapers, the Chronicle and the Guardian, and at least four profitable restaurants, black-owned and operated, that catered to both black and white customers...There were four drug stores, a florist shop, an appliance store, barber shop, hairdressing parlors, a tailor, and black businesses lining Tremont Street. Blacks in the 1930s accounted for only 6 percent of Boston's population, but the neighborhood was vibrant and upbeat."

Jazz clubs and cafés stretched up Mass. Ave. in the 1940s and '50s. The black community called this area "Crosstown" or "The Avenue." Many older black Bostonians remember Crosstown with great fondness, reciting long lists of famous musicians who played at the clubs. In the days when hotels were racially segregated, local people would put musicians up for the night. Eva Fisher opened her home on West Springfield Street to entertainers; friends say Bojangles Robinson, Ethel Waters, and Eubie Blake stayed there. The Hyatts did the same on Worcester Street, and Myra McAdoo's mother Gladys in Roxbury. They say Myra once saved up to buy a ticket to see Duke Ellington only to discover he was the "Uncle Edward" who played bridge at her mother's.

Throughout the Fifties and Sixties, there were many black homeowners and businesses in the South End, and many neighborhood groups were headed by blacks; the list is long. Then came Urban Renewal-"Urban Removal" to many black people.

One native South Ender, now in his 70s, talks in terms of "When the South End was the South End."

"We don't have the neighborhood or the neighbors anymore," he says. Says another, "So much has changed, my identity is fading."

Although developers have built or renovated low-income housing in the South End (more for newcomers than old-timers), the answer to the question, "Do you live in the South End?" is all too often "I used to."

Alison Barnet is the author of the recently-published South End Character, which can be purchased for $10 at the South End Food Emporium, 465 Columbus Ave., or at Blunch, 59 East Springfield Street. They do it "for the neighborhood" and make no profit from the book.