The Unseen Stops: Movement Building for Neighborhood Improvement and Transit Equity in Post-Urban Renewal Dorchester

Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0005-3221-1253

Degree Year

2025

Document Type

Thesis - Oberlin Community Only

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History

Advisor(s)

Annemarie Sammartino

Committee Member(s)

Zeinab Abul-Magd
Pablo Mitchell

Keywords

Boston, Dorchester, Urban renewal, Public transit, Race, Black community, CDC, MBTA, Roxbury, Blue Hill Ave, Streetcars

Abstract

The aftermath of urban renewal within United States cities brought many communities to target disinvestments they experienced in both physical infrastructure and social issues. Community organizations and block clubs formed to target what they felt the government did not prioritize. Scholars thoroughly investigate the impact of community groups in Boston on school desegregation. Still, fewer scholars focus on how these community groups impacted other issues, such as widespread arson and disinvestment in public transit that took place in conjunction with the desegregation movement. This thesis explores Boston’s neighborhood of Dorchester as a place of longstanding progressive organizing that formed in the face of a new complex racial identity moving into the 1970s of new Black residents and young white college graduates. Through an investigation of community groups, this thesis showcases how the strengths and focuses impacted future movements and organizing in the neighborhood, specifically on public transit. These once-fledgling community groups in the 1970s and 1980s continued to impact the community for decades to come. This thesis shows how a successful movement for public transit improvement reached beyond age groups and the neighborhood's geographic limits. It also raises the question of how communities that organize effectively for improvement find themselves also at risk of gentrification and displacement.

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