Ruth Batson

Ruth M. Batson (1921-2003), civil rights activist and outspoken advocate of equal education and the desegregation of Boston Public Schools, served on the Public Education Committee of the NAACP Boston Branch and later served as the executive director of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO). Throughout her life, in various professional roles, she championed fair and equal public education.

Ruth Marion (Watson) Batson was born August 3, 1921 in Roxbury, Massachusetts to Jamaican immigrants, Joel R. Watson and Cassandra D. Buchanan. She attended the Everett School in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Batson graduated from the Girls Latin School in 1939.

As a young woman, Ruth Batson attended the Nursery Training School of Boston, which was associated with Boston University. She later received a Master of Education degree from Boston University in 1976.

At age nineteen, Ruth Watson married John C. Batson. The two parented three daughters: Cassandra Way, Susan Batson, and Dorothy Owusu. John Batson died in 1971.

Ruth Batson died on October 28, 2003, at the age of 82.

Inspired by her mother's interest in civil rights, Batson became the chairman of the Public Education Sub-Committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1953. In April 1957, she became the chairwoman of the New England Regional Conference of the NAACP, where she worked as a civil rights lobbyist. In the early 1960s, she challenged the Boston School Committee, charging that Boston Public Schools were largely segregated. She also pointed out that schools with high black enrollments received inadequate facilities. Batson accused school administrators with ignoring "a basic American concept that equal opportunity should be available to all people regardless of race, color, or creed."

Batson was the first black woman on the Democratic National Committee and the first woman elected president of NAACP’s New England Regional Conference, a role in which she served from 1957 to 1960.

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