Dorchester is an amazing place and its history is nearly as old as America itself. The town of Dorchester was settled in May, 1630 (one month before its neighbor, Boston). It began as and remained a farming community for the next 250 years before developing into a suburban area, then an urban area. Today, Dorchester contains as many as 36 sub-neighborhoods whose differences may not be detected by a casual passerby, but are very obvious to residents. One of these sub-neighborhoods is called Codman Square. This is home for The Boston Project Ministries.
A Rural Beginning
There is a reason for everything. Codman Square was formed in 1654 by the intersection of a colonial road and an Indian trail. Intersections were important because travelers from four directions would come past an intersection, making it valuable property for commerce.
Suburban Transformation
When Dorchester was annexed to Boston in 1870, land speculation transformed rural Codman Square into a densely built suburb. Catholic and Jewish families populated the area in the early part of the 20th Century, built around religious institutions like churches and synagogues. These religious institutions were extremely important to these recent immigrants, becoming the centers of cohesive communities. In the 1920’s, an African American community established themselves in Codman Square after a few black churches located there.
Urban Life
In 1950, Dorchester maintained a stable Jewish and Catholic population, but change was on the way. Because of civil rights turmoil in Southern states, many blacks began to migrate north with hopes of a more stable and prosperous life. Many of these hopes were struck down as they encountered the harsh and racist reality of most northern cities, including Boston. For example, in the 1970’s, Boston began a well-intended home-buying program for African Americans, which in the end caused more urban unrest than almost any other event in Boston history. Real estate companies illegally drew lines around certain neighborhoods which they wanted to sell to only African Americans at below market rates made possible by this program. These neighborhoods were primarily Jewish, and real estate agents used the fear of African Americans moving in to get Jewish families to sell their homes for as low as $100, only to resell to African American families at much higher prices. These and other events (such as the bussing crisis in the 1970’s) led to major destabilization of the neighborhood, and in many ways the community is still recovering.
Our Neighborhood Today
Today, Codman Square is a fascinating place. It is the center point of the central Dorchester neighborhood. People from fifty nations live here, with socio-economic and social differences ranging from immigrant families living well below the poverty level to middle and upper class professionals living in historic neighborhoods. These various slivers of community today constitute a vibrant, transient, and occasionally violent area which has made tremendous improvements over the past 20 years.
Source: Codman Square: History, Turmoil, and Revival, under Publications written by William J. Walczak
