William H. Scott family papers

William H. Scott (1848-1910), was born a slave in Virginia on June 15, 1848. In April of 1862, he escaped and joined the 12th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. Following the Civil War, Scott studied at Howard University Law School. He taught newly freed slaves in Virginia until he was forced to flee the state as a result of racist intimidation. He then enrolled at Wayland Seminary and was ordained a Baptist minister in 1880. He served churches in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Massachusetts. He established "Scott's Boston Cheap Bookstore" in the 1880s, selling it in 1892 when he moved to Boston to serve as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church. Scott was an advocate for African American rights. He founded the Massachusetts Racial Protective Association in March 1896; he was one of 29 original members of the Niagara Movement; and he helped organize the National Independent Political League in 1908. Scott died in Woburn, Massachusetts, on June 27, 1910.

William H. Scott, Jr. (1887-1976) was the son of William H. Scott and Laura Ann Fields Scott. In 1904, at the age of 17, he joined the Company L of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment, a "colored company" of the United States Army. He enrolled at Harvard in 1906 and attended for one year. Scott followed his father's interest in politics and was active in the National Equal Rights League. He wrote for radical periodicals, including The Clarion and The New Negro. Scott married Mary E. Robinson in 1907 and they had two children: William J. Scott and Henry Thompson Scott. In 1917 Scott enlisted in the Army again and was admitted to the Infantry Central Officers' training school in Camp Pike, Arkansas. He was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Officers' Reserve Corp on January 15, 1919. He spent the same year in attendance at the Northeastern College of Law. He eventually spent most of his working life employed by the Monsanto Chemical Company in Everett, Massachusetts. While employed for Monsanto, Scott also did freelance work for the Baltimore Afro-American as a photographer. He married Lillian Wilson Gaskin in 1948 after the death of his first wife in 1946. William H. Scott, Jr. died in 1976.