LYNN ― Virginia Barton’s children remember their mother’s favorite saying as clear as day.
“My mother’s big line to us kids was ‘never look down on anybody unless you’re looking down to help them up,'” her son Buzzy, vice president of the Lynn City Council, recalled.
Though they knew her best, Virginia Barton’s legacy is not merely cherished by her seven children (six grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren); the strides she helped make for civil rights in the city laid the foundation for crucial racial-justice advocacy still in practice today. And she did it all with a gentle voice and a sweet smile.
“You never saw the bad side of her because she always kept that smile on her face,” Buzzy remembered. “She had to talk people off the ledge, do whatever she had to do to get what needed to be done, but she was so gentle.”
Barton, née Smith, was born in Lynn and graduated from Classical High School in 1946. Her first brush with community engagement was in the early 1960s, when she volunteered to stuff envelopes filled with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP’s) newsletter. Then, after a fire, Barton, a young mother, had trouble finding a home for her and her children.
“I received numerous telephone calls from people with offers for an apartment but when I said I am a woman of color, their story would change,” she told The Item in 1980. “I had been through the same scene many times before. Apartments were available until they found out about my race.”
The NAACP was an empowering presence in Barton’s life. She enthusiastically rose through the ranks until achieving the post of president of the North Shore chapter. Though Barton, who died in 2010, was a participant and leader in many civic initiatives ― including the Greater Lynn Racial Harmony Committee and Citizens Against Racism ― she is perhaps best remembered for her position as a charter member of the Community Minority Cultural Center (CMCC).
“The Community Minority Cultural Center is the love of my life,” she joked in a 1987 interview with The Item, adding: “It teaches young people about where they came from and keeps Black history alive.”
Her dedication to the Community Minority Cultural Center stays fresh in her children’s memories.
“I remember nights when I’d take a ride by the CMCC and it would be 8, 9 o’clock at night and she’d be sitting there by herself doing some work,” Buzzy recalled fondly, and noted that his mother was also responsible for helping to institute the CMCC credit union, at the time the first minority credit union north of Boston. “She was always trying to figure out ways to get money for people who didn’t qualify for loans,” he said.
Barton’s eldest daughter, Patricia, also took pride in her mother’s efforts at the credit union.
“She and (other CMCC charter members) Abner Darby and Frances Taggart were extremely instrumental in ensuring that minorities were given a fairer shake in obtaining loans and, also, they encouraged people to save,” she said. “They just made everything much, much more accessible.”
So much of Barton’s legacy revolves around her natural gift as an educator, and her passionate focus on educating the younger generation.
“One of her strongest messages was that children come first,” said Pat, a former middle-school principal in Lynn. “You always put children first.”
While her zeal for opening minds inspired a generation of CMCC visitors, Barton might have been looking to give something she had been denied.
“That’s part of the reason why she felt so, so strongly about education,” Pat said. “She herself had been denied a scholarship to an art school because she was Black.”
Barton, never bitter and always looking forward, sought to enrich Lynn’s public schools and spent more than 20 years as the district’s Title I coordinator, retiring in 1995. The federal program seeks financial assistance for public-school districts with a high percentage of low-income students; after Barton left that position, her role as an education advocate became more literal, when she became a guest lecturer in Black history with Gordon College.
In an unorthodox arrangement, Gordon students would pile into Barton’s home ― sometimes 20 at a time ― and listen as she recounted Lynn history, Black history, her history.
“This was when my mother’s health was starting to fail and she wasn’t able to get out as much as she used to,” Pat explained. “So because she couldn’t go out to them, the college students would come (to her), and I mean, literally they would be sitting on the floor.
“And my mother would just regale them with stories. She would tell her tale, the tale of her life and everything that had gone on in this city. And she lived for that. That kept you going for a number of years.”
In 2006, Gordon College added one honor to a litany of awards and accolades accrued by Barton in her lifetime: the dedication of a new dormitory building as “Barton Hall.”
Still, of all the people she inspired in her lifetime, she had the greatest effect on her own children.
“I’m a retired firefighter, and I was president of the Firefighters Union,” Buzzy explained. “My mother always told me, if you don’t like the way something is, get involved ― change it.”
The city councilor and his mother were able to bask in their successes side by side.
Pat recounted a city Black History Banquet, which the late Sen. Ted Kennedy attended.
“If you could see her, she was just beaming all night ― my mother had the greatest smile, and I mean, that smile didn’t leave her face for weeks and weeks,” Pat recalled. “She had a clipping up in her house of when Ted Kennedy came and it said ‘I came because of Buzzy’ and that was just great ― that was just the best ever.”
Barton died before conversations around racial justice began to change radically in the country, and in the city. What would she have to say about police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the many protests and demonstrations sparked by the murder of George Floyd?
According to Pat and Buzzy, their optimistic, go-getter of a mother wouldn’t be sitting on the sidelines. She wouldn’t dwell on what she couldn’t do; instead, she would do what she could.
“I’m sure she’d be upset with the way some of the things are going in today’s world, but she would be right in the middle of the fight,” Buzzy stated.
“My mother always tried to see the bright side of things, so she would feel as if we’ve come quite a distance, because the people in power seem to have a better understanding of the disparities among the races,” Pat added. “She would find that very, very enlightening and encouraging.”
In old clippings, Barton’s voice affirms her children’s glowing image of her: Her bright soul, gentleness and incisiveness shines through in her quotes.
“Racism can be a problem, even here, and everyone realizes that by working together it doesn’t have to occur in Lynn,” she told The Item in 1980.
“She just loved everyone in Lynn,” said Buzzy. “And she always wanted to help people.”
