1. Melnea Agnes Cass was an American community and civil rights activist.
15 Facts About Melnea Cass
1. 2.
Melnea Cass was deeply involved in many community projects and volunteer groups in the South End and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston and helped found the Boston local of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
3.
Melnea Cass was active in the fight to desegregate Boston public schools, as a board member and as president of the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
4.
Melnea Cass's father was a janitor and her mother a domestic worker.
5.
The family moved to the South End of Boston when Melnea Cass was five years old from Richmond, Virginia.
6.
Melnea Cass returned to Boston to the home that her Aunt Ella had established for the girls.
7.
Melnea Cass did this type of work until her marriage to Marshall Cass, in December 1917.
8.
Melnea Cass helped to organize people to register to vote after the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.
9.
Melnea Cass was involved in women's suffrage activities for the rest of her life.
10.
Melnea Cass first contributed her services to the Robert Gould Shaw House, a settlement house and community center.
11.
From 1962 to 1964, Melnea Cass was president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
12.
From 1975 to 1976, Melnea Cass was chairperson for the Massachusetts Advisory Committee for the Elderly.
13.
Melnea Cass was honored by then-Massachusetts Attorney General, Edward W Brooke, on May 22,1966, which was declared Melnea Cass Day.
14.
Melnea Cass received honorary doctorates from Northeastern University, Simmons College, and Boston College.
15.
Melnea Cass is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.