Roxbury Action Program

Ernest Hamilton, Black Power: What is it? (1966)

The social and political tumult experienced in Boston during the early 1960s came to a head in 1968 when Roxbury erupted in riots for the second time in a year following the assassination of Martin Luther King. Galvanized by the effects of segregation in housing and schooling, racism, inequality, and poverty, members of the local community began to pursue a radical agenda of community defense and revitalization, fueled by the Black Power movement.

Two organizations stood out in leading the way: the Roxbury Action Program and the Boston branch of the Black Panther Party. For several years, the American Friends Service Committee had operated a program in Roxbury to address housing needs and tenants' rights, but responding to the post-riot demands of the Black community for local leadership and control, the AFSC spun off this program in November 1968 to create the Roxbury Community Committee, which was incorporated as an independent organization, the Roxbury Community Program (RAP), on Dec. 28, 1968. Though fully independent, RAP received a significant boost from the New England branch of the AFSC, which raised $92,000 to fund the first two years of its activities in revitalizing the Highland Park neighborhood.

Under its founders George J. Morrison and Lloyd King, RAP focused on the housing and educational needs of the Highland Park community, seeking to revitalize the neighborhood by promoting economic self-development and "helping the people themselves to understand the political significance of their plight." Central to their philosophy was the idea of Black self-determination, consciousness raising, and community control, by which they would build "the authority and skills" within the community "to immediately proceed in the solution of its own problems and in the determination of its own goals." RAP assisted in securing land control and stabilizing and renovating structures, and they provided social services ranging from support for Black businesses to Black draft counseling, health and legal referrals, a Black library, and community awareness programs. They were instrumental, as well, in securing a new community college for the area (Roxbury Community College).

Contemporaneous with the organization of RAP, Delano Farrar and other radicals formed the Boston branch of the Black Panther Party at 375 Blue Hill Ave., Roxbury, which shared the same broad agenda as RAP. Building on the ten point plan of the national Party, the Panthers organized successfully within the community for housing, health care, political education, and employment, though within a year, the revolutionary, a Marxist-Leninist faction displaced the chapter's early leaders and pursued an agenda dedicated more specifically to class struggle.

From the guide to the Roxbury Action Program Collection MS 765., 1944-1975, 1966-1974, (Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries)