Ruth Batson

Community and civil rights activist Ruth Marion Batson, daughter of Joel and Cassandra Watson, was born August 3, 1921, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. She attended the Nursery Training School of Boston, Boston University, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and received her master's in education from Boston University in 1976. In 1941, she married John C. Batson; they had three daughters, Cassandra Way, Susan Batson, and Dorothy Owusu. John Batson died in 1971.

Batson was chairwoman of the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) from 1963 to 1966. From 1966 to 1970, she served as assistant director and executive director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), a voluntary integration program busing students from racially imbalanced (predominantly with minority students) districts in Boston to schools in the surrounding suburbs (predominantly with white students). At Boston University, she was the director of the consultation and education program (1970-1975), director of the school desegregation research project (1975-1981), coordinator of the clinical task force, and associate professor at the School of Medicine's Division of Psychiatry. From 1987 to 1990, she was president and director of the Museum of Afro American History (later the Museum of African American History). In 1969, she founded the Ruth M. Batson Educational Fund, which provided grants to African American students, educational institutions, and community organizations.

A board member of the New England Television Corporation and WNEV-TV, Channel 7, Batson also served on the board of trustees of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston City Hospital, and the Citizens Training Group, Boston Juvenile Court. She was a member of the corporation of Massachusetts General Hospital, co-chairperson of the 1982 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Convention, co-chair of the National Advisory Committee on the Documentary Series Eyes on the Prize, and a member of the board of trustees of Tougaloo College. She was also the first woman to serve as president of the New England Regional Conference of the NAACP.

Batson won numerous awards and honors, including the Sojourner Truth Award of the Association of Business and Professional Women of Boston and Vicinity (1967), the Mary Hudson Olney Award, the highest commendation from the Hall of Black Achievement (1990), and the lifetime achievement Opening Doors Award from the Women's Institute for Housing and Economic Development (2002).

Batson was a frequent guest speaker and wrote numerous articles and papers. In 2001, Northeastern University Press published Batson's The Black Educational Movement in Boston: A Sequence of Events (1638-1975) .

Ruth Batson died October 28, 2003, in Roxbury, Massachusetts.