Denied a state job because she was Black, she took a stand. And became a hero.
“All this turmoil will probably do me no good,” Jane Bosfield said amid her 1915 fight for workplace equality, “but it will make the way easier for other girls of my race.”
On the crisp, clear morning of April 24, 1915, Jane R. Bosfield and her mother left their home in Boston’s Allston neighborhood to make their way to Medfield, about 20 miles southwest of the city. Jane was traveling to interview for a stenographer job at Medfield State Hospital, or, as it was commonly known, Medfield Insane Asylum. She was the seventh of the 10 Bosfield children, raised in a family that valued education and a strong work ethic. Her parents, Elizabeth and Samuel, had emigrated from the Bahamas at the turn of the century, first renting an apartment in Cambridge and then saving to purchase their own house. Her father, a newspaper editor back in his native country, now worked as a compositor at Riverside Press, which published The Atlantic Monthly magazine as well as books and other periodicals.