Oral history interview with George Adams. Adams was born in the South End in the early 1920s to a Jamaican family. His father immigrated to Boston in 1914 to work as a railroad porter; Adams describes his father as a strict man who worked until his death in 1947. Adams’ mother died shortly after she arrived in Boston, leaving a large family of children. Adams describes his childhood as turbulent, moving from various apartments with his siblings, the Lyman School for Boys correctional institute, foster care, and his father’s and stepmother’s home in Lower Roxbury. He describes his experience growing up in the South End as diverse and harmonious, and shares his perception that racial discrimination against Black people was mostly felt in the”social life of the white world” and in employment, especially during the Great Depression. Adams relates his experience working at the New York office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1950 to 1958, and compares the Black social life of Boston and New York. He shares his “humanist” approach toward civil rights and his disapproval of Black nationalist political organizations of the 1950s and 1960s. Topics also mentioned include Haiti, Nova Scotia, Wellesley, Westborough, Albion Street, Castle Street, Castle Square, Clark Street, Tremont Street, Shawmut Avenue, Kirkland Street, Porter Street, Kneeland Street, Beach Street, Broadway, the Boston Public Garden, Herald Street, the Southwest Expressway, Dover Street, Dartmouth Street, Massachusetts Avenue, Douglas Square, Hammond Street, Davenport Street, Sherman School, West Newton Street, the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Case, the Abraham Lincoln School, First National Bank, the English High School, Boston Latin School, the Black Panthers, Pullman Porters, United Neighbors of Lower Roxbury, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, the novel Native Son, Malcolm X, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Mayor James Michael Curley, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Reverend Ferguson at St. Cyprian’s Church, Calvin Johnson. Transcript is missing page 30 and is heavily marked with pen.
