Black History Month - February 26, 2021

These houses all have one thing in common: around 1966, members of the Executive Board of the Melrose Civil Rights Committee lived in them. They included Mrs. Charles LeDoux at 75 Perkins Street; Ben S. Hersey at 65 Clifton Park; Ernest W. Gordon at 279 Upham Street; Ruth Willey at 72 Ridgewood Lane; Robert F. Yaffe at 20 Goss Street; and Mr. & Mrs. Paul S. Anderson at 69 Harold Street.

The MCRC formed in the mid-1960s to fight against racial discrimination in Melrose, particularly in the area of housing. Unlike in the South, segregation in Melrose was not a local government policy. It was carried out by neighbors who quietly agreed never to sell their homes to Black buyers. In 1966 the MCRC wrote in an anti-segregation pamphlet “Although Northerners do not legislate segregation, we have developed remarkably efficient techniques for maintaining it.” The MCRC aimed to disrupt those techniques through anti-racist education and dialogue with their fellow white Melrosians.

Melrose now has a number of independent organizations engaging in similar education and dialogue initiatives. In 1992, the city of Melrose gave official sanction to such work through the formation of the Melrose Human Rights Commission; the formation of a new Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion taskforce will strengthen those efforts. The MCRC attests to a long tradition of anti-racism among white Melrosians, which is heartening; that their work is unfinished all these years later is discouraging.