From hosting dances and plays to providing room and board for women going to local colleges, the League was one of the few places in Boston that offered comprehensive services for people of color, especially Black women.
Coretta Scott King stayed at the League for a year when she was attending the New England Conservatory of Music in the early 1950s. She was just one of many Black women who found a safe space within the League's walls.[The League] felt that it was important for them to provide resources," says Dr. Johnnie Hamilton-Mason, a Simmons University professor and researcher involved in the restoration of the League.
As a teacher, Baldwin opened up her Cambridge home to Black students attending Harvard University, one of whom was W.E.B. Du Bois . Beyond her work in the education field, she was closely connected and worked with Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin to found the Woman's Era Club, one of the oldest Black women's clubs, and The Woman's Era newspaper, one of the first newspapers in the United States to center and prioritize the experiences of Black women.
When it was built,"it was considered the most opulent house in Boston," Redd Knight says."And to this day, it probably is one of the very few spaces in the South End that continues to have all of its original fixtures." From silver doorknobs to mahogany and rosewood finishing, the property is the epitome of luxury."The chandeliers are imported from Paris. I believe the wallpaper is from Brussels.
The League also recently launched a collaboration with the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library at Harvard to preserve and digitize the commemorative"Personal War Sketches" book found at the property."It features members of the Robert A. Bell Post 134, Grand Army of the Republic, which was composed of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Regiments and the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry — military units exclusively of Black soldiers," says Redd Knight.
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