As part of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau Neighborhoods Project, we recently spent 2 days in Roxbury capturing scenes and testimonials to create an authentic story about Roxbury as a community and cultural center. We spoke to small business owners, artists, retailers, restaurant owners and neighborhood ambassadors.
The conversation yielded what we know to be true – for over 250 years Roxbury has been an essential ingredient in the story of Boston as a pioneering and world-class city. It was Roxbury that emerged as a protective barrier to fend off the British, it was in Roxbury where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ministered at the 12th Baptist Church, and where Malcolm X lived with his sister during formative years, it was in Roxbury where jazz musicians defined that genre in Boston, and in the middle decades of the 20th Century no other area in Boston, save for perhaps downtown, rivaled Roxbury as a bustling commercial and cultural hub.
