Lower Roxbury Black History Project

Oral history interview transcript with Byron Rushing

Bailey, Ronald William (Creator)

Rushing, Byron (Interviewee)
Turner, Diane (Interviewer)

English

December 11, 1989

Text

Oral histories

born digital

Byron Rushing is a former Representative for the 9th Suffolk District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Rushing was born July 29, 1942 in New York City, as the youngest son of William and Linda Rushing. He attended Harvard University from 1960 to 1964, leaving in his junior year to participate in the Civil Rights Movement and work for the Congress of Racial Equality in Syracuse, New York. Rushing returned to Boston in 1964 to work as a community organizer for several organizations, including the Northern Student Movement and the Roxbury Associates. He also attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970 where he became interested in African American history. From 1972 to 1984, Rushing served as president of Boston's Museum of Afro American History, now the Museum of African American History. Rushing was elected to the Massachusetts State House of Representatives for the 9th Suffolk District in 1982-2019. He and his wife, Frieda Garcia, were presented with the Harriet Tubman Community Achievement Award in 2012, and Rushing was awarded a HistoryMaker Award by The History Project in 2014. In this interview, Rushing speaks about growing up in New York and community organizing in Boston. Rushing outlines his family background and speaks on growing up in a poor family in the Bronx and Syracuse, New York. He speaks about the energy and optimism of the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960's, which motivated him to begin community and tenet organizing in Roxbury in Boston, Massachusetts. He speaks about the Northern Student Movement, including establishing tutoring programs and empowering the Black community. Rushing reflects on Boston's public education environment in the 1960's, and the limited success of programs for Black students such as Operation Exodus. Rushing speaks about organizing in Lower Robury for the Roxbury Associates, particularly, the organization's successful advocacy to clean up Madison Park and organizing tenets living in the Campus High School Urban Renewal Area. Other topics discussed include tenet organizer Ralph Smith, the Center for Inner City Change, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Museum of African American History, and sociopolitical changes in Roxbury over time.

In 1989 and 1990, Milton Derr, Mel King, and Byron Rushing, three prominent members of Boston's African American community, were interviewed about their lives and work in preparation for a book by Ronald W. Bailey with Diane Turner and Robert Hayden, entitled Lower Roxbury: A Community of Treasures in the City of Boston.--Collection finding aid

Collection finding aid: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20297052

Ronald W. Bailey oral history collection, 1989-1990 (M153)

Rushing, Byron
African Americans -- Political activity
African Americans -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- Social conditions
African American politicians
Civil rights -- Massachusetts -- Boston
Community development, Urban -- Massachusetts -- Boston
Roxbury (Boston, Mass.)

RushingByron_19891211_Transcript

Northeastern University Library
Archives and Special Collections (M153)

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