Stories from Mount Hope: Melnea Cass

Melnea Cass, known as “The First Lady of Roxbury”, was a noted community organizer and activist who pushed and protested for educational and economic opportunities for African Americans.  Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury is named in her honor.

“I am convinced that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can, for the harder I work, the more I live.”

Melnea Agnes Jones was born on June 16, 1896, in Richmond, Virginia.  When she was 5 years old, her parents, Mary Drew Jones (a domestic worker) and Albert Jones (a janitor), decided to move to Boston for a better education for their children and better job opportunities.  Her mother died when she was 8 years old, and she and her sisters were cared for by their Aunt Ella Drew (also a domestic worker).  Despite being a Baptist, she attended the St. Francis de Sales Convent School in Virginia, a Catholic school for African-American and native American girls, and graduated as valedictorian.  When she graduated, there were few job opportunities for minority women, so she was a domestic worker until she married Marshall Cass in 1917.  They had three children, Marshall, Mariane, and Melanie.

Cass’ experiences with racial and gender discrimination prompted her to become involved in community projects after women received the right to vote in 1920.  Her mother-in-law, Rosa Brown, was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and when women got the right to vote, she encouraged Cass to vote.  At the time many women were afraid that, if they voted, it would affect their husbands’ jobs or have other repercussions for their families.  Melnea Cass organized voting drives to sign up African-American women.  Rosa Brown also founded the Women’s Service Club, and Melnea Cass eventually was elected their president.  The club was founded in 1919 to improve job opportunities for minority women and to support African-American soldiers during World War I.  Among other accomplishments, the organization pushed for legislation to raise benefits and provide equal pay for domestic workers.  Melnea Cass was the president of the Women’s Service Club for more than 15 years.  As president, she created the Homemakers Training Program to provide domestic workers with Social Security and other benefits.  She was passionate about expanding employment opportunities for African Americans and attended protests against racist hiring practices.

Melnea Cass also met William Monroe Trotter, a civil rights activist in Boston, and she attended his lectures and protest meetings and was a regular reader of his newspaper,  The Guardian.  His influence sparked her to become more involved in community activism.

She once recalled in an interview:

Well, in those days, of course, being Black, dear, affected every Black person getting any kind of job. Of course, you could get domestic work, because they always felt that Black people should do domestic work. But it was getting other kinds of jobs where the discrimination came in....Women could get all the work they wanted, domestic work….You could always make a living. But it wasn’t always what you wanted to do.

In the 1930’s she volunteered at the Robert Gould Shaw House – a settlement house named after the commanding officer of the all-Black Civil War Mass. 54th Regiment.  She established a preschool nursery there and the Friendship Club for neighborhood mothers.  The club allowed mothers of young children to gather and share experiences as well as raise money to send children to camp and support mothers in the community.  She was elected president of the Friendship Club several times.  It seems she served as president of most of the organizations she became involved with!

Melnea Cass was a secretary of the Northeastern Region of the National Association of Colored Women’s Club.  Cass also helped form the Boston chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.  At the time, working as a porter carrying bags on railway cars was a good way for an African-American man to earn a living, and organization of the chapter to support the porters and their efforts to unionize to improve wages was a benefit to African-American communities.

Mayor John Hynes appointed Melnea Cass as the only woman charter member of the anti-poverty agency Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), which was founded to provide assistance to people who lost their homes to urban renewal efforts.  When ABCD was founded, Cass noted at an early meeting that she was the only woman.  The mayor said “Well, you represent the whole community and you can do that nicely”.  She served as president of the Boston Branch of the NAACP in 1962-1964; she organized protests against the segregation policies of the Boston School Committee and supported other civil rights issues, such as voter registration in the South.  

Many Black churches celebrate International Women’s Day when all women’s clubs come together in one church to celebrate the contributions of women.  Cass was frequently chosen to give the sermon for Women’s Day.  In 1967 she was the first woman to deliver a sermon from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Boston.  

In 1966 Governor John Volpe declared May 22 “Melnea Cass Day" in honor of her 70^th birthday  and her contributions to the community.  Over 2,000 people joined the celebration at the Hotel Bradford.  Organizations and people from all over Massachusetts contributed to a memory book which was presented to Cass.

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In 1968, Gov. Volpe dedicated the Melnea Cass Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) Swimming and Skating Rink in Roxbury to improve the lives of inner-city youth. It was the first MDC facility named after a living person.  In honor of her fundraising activity and her work on the Women ’76 program, the YWCA in Boston’s Back Bay was renamed for Melnea Cass to acknowledge her tireless efforts for children, families, and career development.  

Melnea Cass was awarded honorary degrees from Northeastern University (1969), Simmons College (1971), and Boston College (1975), prompting friends to call her “Dr. Cass.” She was named “Massachusetts Mother of the Year” in 1974 for her work as a community organizer and civil rights activist.  

In 1977, Mayor Kevin White hosted an event honoring seven "Grand Bostonians." Cass was one of them, and in an interview with WGBH about the honor, she spoke about her approach to activism:

 You never give up hope, never, because just when you think you’re gonna give up, that’s when you could really gain the victory — if you just kept on going, just a little bit more.

Melnea Cass died in 1978, and she is commemorated on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail.  Her motto in life: “If we cannot do great things, we can do small things in a great way.”

She is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery in the World War Veterans area. 

Bibliography

1.  Melnea Agnes Cass, interview by Tahi L. Mottl  Black Women Oral History Project, Harvard University, https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:45168257$1i  
2. National Park Service Profile  https://www.nps.gov/people/dr-melnea-agnes-jones-cass.htm#ftnref6 

3. Boston Women’s Heritage Trail Profile https://www.bwht.org/about/biographies/melnea-cass/ 

Written by Heather Pence and edited by Sally Ebeling, March 2025

The Stories of Mount Hope blog features periodic posts on a variety of topics concerning historic Mount Hope Cemetery. This blog is hoping to unearth the hidden stories of Mount Hope Cemetery. Please let us know if there is something you think should be highlighted by emailing storiesfrommounthope@boston.gov