Ruth Batson

A former director of the Museum of African American History, Ruth Batson (1921-2003) was chairperson of the education committee of Boston NAACP that led the fight in the early 1960s against segregation in the Boston Public Schools.

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Virginia Isaacs

Virginia Isaacs Trotter (1842-1919) managed her family’s real estate in Hyde Park and supported her son Monroe, who established the Boston Guardian. She was a leading voice in early civil rights.

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Ellen Jackson

Ellen Swepson Jackson (1935-2005) was the founding director of the Freedom House Institute of Schools and Education and the visionary behind Operation Exodus, a program that bussed inner-city students to less crowded schools.

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Muriel Snowden

Co-founded Freedom House, Inc., a Boston nonprofit community-based organization dedicated to human rights and advocacy for African-Americans in Boston. Her leadership moved Freedom House into areas of urban renewal, minority employment, and educational equality for children as well as being a positive force for interracial cooperation

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Ella Little-Collins

She joined the Nation of Islam in the mid-1950s where she helped to establish a mosque with a daycare center attached to it. In the early 1940s, she became the guardian of her half-brother Malcolm Little, who later changed his name to Malcolm X

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Sarah-Ann Shaw

Boston’s first Black woman TV reporter, who led Civil Rights voter efforts, told neighborhood stories, and earned numerous accolades.

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