tool name

Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008

Boston found

Georgetown tried to 'lose' historically black section

GEORGETOWN -- Call it two tales of one city.

At one time, a neighborhood a few blocks away from Main Street would have been considered a different world.

At the turn of the 20th century, Georgetown residents and Democratic city leaders signed a petition to remove the northern section of Georgetown from the city. The neighborhood was known as Boston, and it was made up of freed African-American slaves who voted Republican.

The circuit court judge at the time, a Confederate veteran, ignored the lawsuit filed by Boston residents in 1902 and ruled that the neighborhood was no longer part of the city, according to the book Scott County Kentucky: A History.

However, the city's decision was later overturned by the state Supreme Court.

The historical event is not widely known, but since then the historically black neighborhood has remained a community of its own. Through the years, the residents found ways to improve their neighborhood and have been continuing that spirit as the area teeters on neglect.

"Boston had its own uniqueness," said Mayor Karen Tingle-Sames, who grew up in Georgetown and had friends who lived in the Boston area. "They have a pride within their community; it's one of the last areas in Georgetown that is still a community within a town."

According to the 2000 census, 52 percent of the Boston neighborhood residents are black. Descendents of the early residents still live in the neighborhood. Among them is Helen Mitchell, 77, and lifelong resident J.P. Peters, 69.

The neighborhood was established after the Civil War, said Ann Bevins, a local historian who wrote about the neighborhood in 2004. A group of Georgetown residents who were pro-Union sold land in the Boston area to freed slaves.

The earliest deed that has been found for the area was dated February 1867, but the name "New Boston" did not show up on deeds until 1872. The neighborhood was labeled "Boston" in an 1879 map published by a company in Philadelphia. The neighborhood included about 80 houses at the time. It was more like a subdivision than a black hamlet, Bevins said.

Bevins said finding the reason for the neighborhood being named Boston has been a guessing game, but she tends to agree with the opinion that the name alludes to Boston, Mass. The New England city was a stronghold for abolitionism and a strong Union center during the Civil War, she said.

"Because Boston stood for so much in the African-American mind, it was called 'New Boston,'" Bevins said.

The area 'belonged to us'

Boston today has a few historic homes that were once part of the original neighborhood and homes of prominent African-Americans. Along Bourbon Street, the southern boundary of the Boston area, sits the home of Bias Tilford Sr., 74, who serves on the Georgetown planning commission. The home belonged to Charles Steele, a biracial man who was the founder and first principal of Ed Davis High School, a school for black students. Across the street is Mitchell's home, which was owned by John Miller, Sr., a black businessman who had a dry goods store.

It's that deep sense of community that Mitchell remembered about the neighborhood.

"We felt like the Boston area belonged to us," Mitchell said. "We were proud of it."

Much of the neighborhood's social life revolved around the churches and the black schools, which included the high school and the one-room Boston School. Much of Georgetown was segregated, or there was an understanding that blacks could not go to certain areas, like the local movie theater or the library, Mitchell and Peters said.

The need to take care of their own extended to taking care of their neighborhood. Mitchell said she remembered her father tried to get the city to install street lights in a neighborhood just outside Boston nicknamed "black bottom." But the leaders said he would have to pay for the lights to be strung.

"If we wanted things from the city, we took care of our own because we knew they wouldn't give it to us," Mitchell said. "We as an area was like a big family."