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Article: Diversity at rest ; Researcher aims to chronicle cemetery's inclusion of local blacks
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- September 9, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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As Sylvia McDowell walks through Forest Hills Cemetery, the names
roll quickly off her tongue:
There's Jimmy "Slyde" Godbolt, a local tap dancer whose fancy
footwork dazzled international audiences. A pair of slippers is
engraved on his mahogany headstone. And Wilbert and Beltide
Husbands. He used to head a black-owned credit union on Tremont
Street.
There are Butler and Mary Evans Wilson. He cofounded the local
NAACP. Her knitting club made socks and scarves for World War I
soldiers.
"I keep finding people," says McDowell, a 74-year-old retired MIT
librarian.
McDowell is on a mission to reveal the black history of a
cemetery best known as the last resting place of Boston's white
elite, ...