The City Council on Tuesday will formally name a fifth floor conference room after Thomas Atkins, the first black Bostonian to serve city-wide.
Atkins served on the council from 1968 to 1971. He lost a campaign for mayor in 1971, according to “African-Americans in Boston: More than 350 Years,” an accounting of elected and appointed black officials in the Greater Boston area.
Born in Elkhart, Indiana on March 2, 1939, Atkins attended Indiana University and became its first African-American student body president. He also attended Harvard, receiving a master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies and a law degree.
In a release highlighting the dedication, City Council President Stephen Murphy’s office called Atkins a “champion of social and economic justice” during his City Council career. “He continued working for civil rights at his law practice of Atkins and Brown as well as serving as the Executive Director of the Boston Chapter of the NAACP, General Counsel of the NAACP organization and as the Secretary of Communities and Development under Governor Francis Sargent.”
According to Indiana University, Atkins died from Lou Gehrig’s disease on June 27, 2008.
The dedication of the room, proposed by Murphy and City Councillor At-Large Felix Arroyo, is scheduled for 10 a.m.
