At 92, McGuire remains an enduring reminder of the momentous progress that the city has made to ensure ample educational opportunities for every student, as well as the work that still must be done.
“I really want them to keep [what I did] going,” McGuire said. “Give money to kids for college, and get more kids in education.”
Born in Boston in 1931, McGuire attended public schools in Brookline. She initially studied at Howard University, but returned to Boston and earned an education degree from Boston State College in 1961.
McGuire taught at several schools in Boston, working in conditions where students often outnumbered desks, school supplies were in short supply, and the only books available were worn and filled with racist slurs. A few years after she first began teaching, McGuire became the first Black social worker to work in the Boston Public Schools system. Finding that the Boston School Committee was “totally unresponsive to Black students,” she helped craft the “Freedom School” curriculum that taught Black students the Black history lessons that the Boston Public Schools often lacked.
In 1981, she became the first Black woman elected to the Boston School Committee, and sat on the panel for a decade.
She also helped found the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or Metco, the voluntary, state-funded program that places Boston students in better-performing, better-resourced suburban districts, giving them a chance at better educational opportunities. She served as Metco’s executive director for more than four decades, until 2016. McGuire estimates she’s worked with more than a thousand students during her time there.
“It’s not just kids going to school,” McGuire said. “You’re part of a community.”
Boston City Councilor Brian Worrell, who represents parts of Dorchester, Mattapan, Roslindale, and Jamaica Plain, attended Lincoln-Sudbury schools through Metco, and built a community outside of his hometown neighborhood of Dorchester. His host family brought him on his first boat ride, and they had fun with school lessons, such as re-enacting parts of the American Revolution to teach Worrell about the country’s early history; in turn, he showed them the wonders of his own culture, including calypso, reggae, jerk chicken, and Boston’s Black history.
“Metco was an eye-opening experience, but one that served me well throughout my life,” Worrell said. “Seeing how my host family was able to receive our culture … made me realize how alike we all are.”
McGuire quickly garnered a reputation as one of Metco’s biggest champions, someone who wouldn’t pull punches when faced with opposition to her beloved program. For both those who considered McGuire a close friend as well as those who never met her, her impact was felt.
Ramon Downes, who works in MIT’s student division, attended Newton Public Schools through Metco. His children are in the program, too. He hasn’t met McGuire, but her name and work were instilled in him and his children. McGuire’s name would appear in his Metco awards programs, and educators would devote some time to share her legacy.
“I just understood that she was a person that championed education for kids in Boston,” Downes said.
To McGuire, her recognition on the 1965 Freedom Plaza seems uneventful. She lamented that it’s a reminder that many of her peers in the civil rights movement have since passed. And instead of recognizing her work, she said she would prefer that people direct their energy and resources toward supporting the next generation.
But Worrell said that McGuire deserves her honor. She’s a living piece of Boston’s Black history, he said, that is engrained in the work of countless people across the city and beyond.
“I am Jean McGuire’s legacy,”…
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