This month, Fig City News profiles two particularly generous members of our community – Josephine McNeil and Lionel Porter– in celebration of Black History Month.
Josephine McNeil
Josephine McNeil is the founder and executive director of the Citizens for Affordable Housing in Newton Development Organization (CAN-DO), a community-based, nonprofit housing development organization with a mission to create and manage affordable housing in the City of Newton. She is an active member of the Newton Fair Housing Committee and the Newton Fair and Affordable Housing Partnership. She also co-chairs U-CHAN and is on the Mission and Social Commission of the Eliot Church of Newton.
“When one thinks about housing, and in particular, affordable housing, you cannot not think of Josephine McNeil,” said State Representative Amy Mah Sangiolo. Sangiolo nominated McNeil for the MA Black Excellence on the Hill Award, sponsored by the Black and Latino Caucus of the MA Legislature. The award celebrates and recognizes the outstanding and transformational work of Black leaders throughout Massachusetts who move the needle forward in cities and towns across the Commonwealth. McNeil will receive the award in a ceremony at the State House on Friday, February 28.
When asked what motivated her commitment to housing, McNeil told Fig City News:
“After leaving my position as a clerk at the Massachusetts Appeal Court, I was hired as an associate at the Boston law firm of Brown Rudnick and Gesmer, assigned to the Real Estate Group. The group included several attorneys who served as pro bono counsel for a group of residents who were negotiating with a developer seeking to purchase the subsidized project in which they resided. I was impressed by the commitment of these residents to have a role in influencing their housing situation. They used those negotiations to position themselves so they could have a role in managing the property and ultimately be a part of the ownership structure. That experience representing the residents made me aware of the potential for residents to improve their housing situation. That experience and my volunteer work in Newton with nonprofit housing organizations placed me in the position to be appointed one of the founding members of CAN-DO and ultimately its executive director.”
When asked how she became involved to work in this field in Newton, McNeil replied:
“When I was working on the matter above, I was invited to serve on the board of two nonprofit housing organizations: the Newton Community Development Foundation (NCDF), supported in part by federal Community Development Building Grant funding (CDBG) to create housing for low-middle income Newton residents, and the HOME program, created by the federal government in the early nineties to create affordable housing. In order to receive the funds, Newton had to create a nonprofit organization to manage the funds and create housing opportunities. So the City approached NCDF to identify individuals to serve on a five-person board, one third of whom had to qualify as low-income (less than 80% of the Area Median Income). I and two other board members joined two NCDF tenants to create the board. I remain committed to serving low-income Newton residents with a focus on providing services to enable them to stabilize their housing situations.
McNeil has received an honorary doctorate from William James College and Eastern Bank’s statewide Community Advocacy Award.
In addition to her work for affordable housing, McNeil also promotes other services to support underserved people. Through CAN-DO, she arranges each year for a group of IRS-certified Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program volunteers in Newton to provide free tax-filing assistance to low-income families and individuals, in part to help them claim their low-income tax credits.
Lionel Porter
Every year, Lionel Porter hosts a Black History Lecture Series to inform and to celebrate Black History Month at Cabot Park Village, where he is a resident.
Porter grew up in Mississippi. Prior to his retirement, he served as Legal Redress Chair for the South Middlesex branch of the Boston NAACP and worked as a mediator in employee discrimination cases in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. He developed a dispute resolution system for the Connecticut Commission Human Rights and Opportunities to help improve the investigative processes and address the backlog of discrimination complaints.
Realizing a lack of programming featuring Black Americans, Porter began a Black History Lecture series designed to “examine every facet of the Black experience in this experiment with democracy.”
Porter explained to Fig City News: “At the outset, I was the sole presenter, focusing on African American literature. However, observing that the protest literature of early Black writers took place within a large social, economic, and political demographic, I began an in-depth study of the history of Black Americans. Later, to enrich the programmatic options, I sought out professionals from various venues – academia, the legal profession, and public service.”
Since at least 2023, Porter has hosted in the Black History Lecture Series noted professors, attorneys, historians, political leaders, artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit leaders:
- Professors John Stauffer, Danielle Allen, Cornell William Brooks, Terrence Johnson, and Randall Kennedy (Harvard); Renee Landers (Suffolk University Law); Rev. Dr. Shively T. J. (Boston University); Alex Briesache (Worcester State University); Andrew Leong (UMass Boston) Susannah Heschel (Dartmouth College); Lena Zuckerwise (Simmons University)
- Attorneys Ana Munoz, Jack Drewry, and David Abromowitz; U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins; Mass. Attorney General Andrea Campbell; Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal (Lawyers for Civil Rights); Angela Clark, Chief of Organizational Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Jamie Hoag, Senior Counselor, Mass. Office of Attorney General
- Historians Cynthia Cowan and Joel Mackall
- Political leaders: Tanisha Sullivan (President of NAACP’s New England Area Conference; Sanofi’s Head of External Engagement, Health Equity Strategy, and MA Governmental Affairs; former candidate for Mass. Secretary of State); Rev. Eugene Rivers (Seymour Institute); State Representatives Bud L. Williams and Amy Sangiolo; Rahsaan Hall (Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts); Newton City Councilor Tarik Lucas
- Artists and authors: Jazz and Blues singer Toni Lynn Washington; Author and motivational speaker George Mumford
- Entrepreneurs: Angela Pitter (Live Wire Collaborative), Dr. Dwayne Thomas (SportsGenius);
- Nonprofit leaders: Audrey Morrissey (My Life, My Choice), Paris Alston (GBH News host)
The lecture series is free and open to the public and has been well received by the Cabot community and by neighbors and colleagues. Upcoming events in the series include:
- Allison Pagliaro, Education Director of Historic Newton (originally February 23, postponed)
- Sharon Stout, President MA Electors and Chair of the Newton Democratic City Committee and Emerge MA (February 27)
- SJC Chief Justice Kimberly Budd (March 4)
