Boston, MassachusettsBoston, MassachusettsBoston, MassachusettsJoyce King, née Kenion, was born on Rose Street in the New York Streets in 1930. “We didn’t call it New York Streets, just “our neighborhood.”
“It was a nice street. Everyone was the same financially, some had one parent, some were nice, some weren’t… I first heard it was a slum when I was 8 or 9.”
“There was a deli serving beer and wine on one corner and a grocery store run by Mr. Cardoza, Cape Verdean, who let you run a tab. Across the street was a ‘house of women’ who hung around in their negligees all day. It wasn’t until years later that I realized… We did errands for them. They were not shunned.”
But it was at the Church of All Nations that Joyce really learned what it is to live in a mixed community. “It taught us about the world and its mixes.”
Joyce during college, c 1950.
— Joyce King
Mel King, whom she married in the early 1950s, also grew up in the New York Streets and also went to the Church of All Nations. When they were teenagers, both had jobs as camp counselors at the Morgan Memorial Fresh-Air camps in Athol.
What did Urban Renewal do for the South End?
“Nothing. I left at 21 before the worst of Urban Renewal. I was getting married anyway. People were forced out of the New York Streets. One way they got people out was to turn off the electricity, so there were no streetlights. The settlement houses tried to help. The older people, especially immigrants, didn’t want to move. That was where they’d first come, where they lived. They didn’t know where to go. It was very sad. Then seeing the neighborhood when it was closed, when everybody was gone, it was desolate.”
Joyce as a toddler, c 1932.
— Joyce King
All photos courtesy of Pamela King