“Even her adversaries would come away feeling good. Problems and hostilities would melt when faced with the force of her love”. The Bay State Banner newspaper wrote about Melnea Cass in 1978. Cass (née Jones) was born in Richmond, Virginia and moved with family to South End, a town in central Boston when she was 5. She was raised by her aunt after her mother’s passing. With her great academic capability, her aunt sent Cass to St. Francis de Sales Convent School in Rock Castle, Virginia. After graduating from high school, she moved back to Boston. In 1920 when Cass was 24, her family moved to Roxbury, Massachusetts. Alongside the support of her husband, Cass found encouragement in becoming a volunteer community activist. Her early exposure occurred after assisting African-American women with registering and casting their first vote right after the nineteenth amendment allowed for it. This would turn to be a lifetime commitment for her in civil rights. She established the Kindergarten Mothers at Robert Gould Shaw House after her children needed a community school. During the 1930s, Cass contributed a lot of her time to volunteering at community centers, and adapting mothers to encourage early childhood education. As president of the Women’s Service Club for over 15 years, women from the South and the Caribbean gained skills for seeking employment and social security benefits. She helped with forming Freedom House, an advocacy organization for Boston African-Americans. Cass would go around with intense encouragement asking local shops to hire African-American workers. She became the president of Boston NAACP from 1962 to 1964 and arranged sit-ins at the Boston Public School Committee office over Boston public school’s segregation. Following her two year tenure, she remained on the NAACP board and witnessed the filing of a class-action lawsuit that propelled court-ordered desegregation in Boston. What she lived to behold occurred on September 12, 1974 when 18,000 African-American and White students received court-ordered bus service to schools outside their neighborhoods for the first time. Cass refused to give up even when she turned 80. From 1975 to 1976, she chaired the Massachusetts Advisory Committee for the Elderly. Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex, a large indoor arena with outdoor swimming pool in Roxbury was dedicated to her in 1968 and Melnea Cass Boulevard in 1981 which runs through the town. She was dubbed “First Lady of Roxbury”. Lastly, a famous saying of hers was “If we cannot do great things, we can do small things in a great way”.

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