Among the most profoundly influential residents of Jamaica Plain was Maud Cuney Hare, who lived at 43 Sheridan Street from 1904 until her death in 1936. Hare orchestrated a lifetime of boundary-breaking work as a pianist, musicologist, playwright, and civil rights activist, demonstrating that the fight for racial equality in Boston was waged in concert halls as well as courtrooms.

Born in Galveston, Texas, to a prominent family, Maud was the daughter of Norris Wright Cuney, was a historic pioneer in Black politics. In 1890, at age sixteen, Hare arrived in Boston and faced severe racist backlash as one of only two Black students enrolled at the New England Conservatory. Supported by her family—her father famously refused the administration’s request to withdraw her—she courageously stood her ground to successfully desegregate the student housing, earning her the lifelong admiration of W.E.B. Du Bois. Following a brief marriage in Chicago and the tragic loss of her young daughter, Vera, she returned to Boston, married William Parker Hare in 1904, and settled into her home on Sheridan Street.

Throughout her career, she defiantly opposed the destructive cultural influence of minstrelsy by meticulously archiving, preserving, and performing authentic Black music. She wrote a regular column on music and art for The Crisis magazine for ten years and toured the country for decades with baritone William Howard Richardson, adamantly refusing to perform for segregated audiences. In 1927, she founded the Allied Arts Centre in Boston to foster a generation of Black talent in art, music, and drama, producing works like her own original play, “Antar of Araby.” In 1936, she published her magnum opus, “Negro Musicians and Their Music,” cementing the centrality of African-American artistry in the global cultural canon.

Information sourced from the Jamaica Plain Historical Society was used in compiling this story.