The Boston City Council has had 3 extremely remarkable members that are worth mentioning. These people include:

1.

Laurence Curtis was born in Boston on September 3, 1893. Before going to college Curtis served in the Foreign Diplomatic Service for a year and then he entered the U.S. Navy during World War 1. While there he was in a crash where he lost his leg and thus was awarded the Silver Star. He then went on to graduate from Harvard University in 1921. At this same time he was also admitted to the Massachusetts bar. He began practicing law in Boston before going on to do some other great things. One of these things was serving on the Boston City Council from 1930 through 1933. Afterwards he was a member of the State house of representatives from 1933 through 1936 and a member of the State Senate from 1936 through 1941. He was also a Republican member of the Congress from January 3, 1953 through January 3, 1963. Along with these great successes though, came a lot of failures too. He failed to become a member of the U.S. Senate or the Congress anytime after 1963. Nevertheless, he continued to live in and serve the people in Boston, Massachusetts until his death on July 11, 1989.

2.

Sam Yoon was born in Seoul, South Korea. He came to America with his parents when he was only 10 months old. When he was 10-years-old he became a naturalized U. S. citizen. He was then elected to the Boston City Council in November 2005 after graduating from Princeton University with a B.A. And from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. While in school he focused upon community economic development and affordable housing. He also worked for numerous community-based non-profits.

He was the first Asian American to ever run for an elected office in Boston. As such he was an At-Large City Councilor who represented every neighborhood in the city of Boston. This was done with a strong commitment to public education, affordable housing and public safety. It was his goal to make Boston a safer, stronger, more affordable place to live. This was done while he chaired both the Housing Committee and the Committee on Hunger and Homelessness.

The New Majority, which is a coalition of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, also had Sam Yoon as a founding member. This group joined together to advance the common agenda for the colored people who were living in Boston. Another group for colored people that Sam Yoon is very active in was Viet-Aid. This is a group that serves the Vietnamese community that is located in Boston's Dorchester area.

Most recently, Sam Yoon has served as the Development Director for the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC). Here he is working on creating affordable housing for people who are living in Boston's Chinatown. Some of the other housing organizations that Sam Yoon has worked for include the Boston Aging Concerns, which is an organization that is focused upon providing housing for families wherein the grandparents are the primary caregivers; The Community Builders, which is the nation's largest nonprofit developer of affordable housing; and Abt Associates, which is a leading public policy research firm.

3.

Anna Louise Day Hicks (October 16, 1916–October 21, 2003) was a United States Irish-American/Catholic politician and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts. She was elected to the Boston School Committee in 1961. Then in June of 1963 she was a chairperson of the committee when the Boston chapter of the NAACP demanded that there should be an immediate public acknowledgment of de facto segregation within the Boston public school system. She was actually the person on the committee who was holding out on the court ordered busing of students into inner-city schools in order to achieve integration. This caused her to become the most popular politician in Boston within several months. However, as you can imagine, this also caused her to become very controversial as well. As such, it is what Anna Louise Day Hicks is most known for. It was at this time that she started an organization that is called Restore Our Alienated Rights (ROAR), which actively engaged in incidents of massive resistance to school desegregation.

In 1967, Anna Louise Day Hicks came within 12,000 votes of being elected as Boston's mayor. Her slogan throughout the campaign was "You know where I stand." So, while she was the first woman president to be president of the Boston City Council, she was unable to become Boston's first female mayor.

Later on, Anna Louise Day Hicks went on to serve 1 term in the United States House of Representatives.

As you can see, Anna Louise Day Hicks was actually quite conservative in racial matters. However, when it came to other matters, she was very progressive. For instance, she was a member of the National Organization for Women, and while a member of this organization serving in Congress she lobbied for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Throughout time there have also been some women on the Boston City Council. The first woman was Katherine “Kitty” Craven who fought for urban renewal in the 1960s. Then in the 1970s Louise Day Hicks fought for school desegregation. However, it was not until the middle of the 1990s that women had the biggest impact. At this time women actually held 4 of the 13 city council seats. These women were Maura Hennigan, Maureen Feeney, Peggy Davis-Mullen and Diane Modica. They worked together to form a critical mass and then rise to powerful positions on committees where they were able to make way for other women to enter into governmental leadership positions. Unfortunately this was brought to an end in 1997 though because of their individual political ambitions as well as because of Boston’s political culture itself. Since that time only 2 women have held seats on the Boston City Council: Maura Hennigan from 1981 through 1987 and Maureen Feeney in 1993.

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