Black History Month: Worcester's Mason Street neighborhood

The old factories are no longer standing, and many of the well-kept modest homes where African-Americans lived have been torn down or replaced by businesses. But the ones that remain near Beaver Brook Park are reminders of one of Worcester's early thriving black communities. "When people think of black Worcester they think of the East Side, but there was a substantial community on the West Side," said Thomas L. Doughton, 63, senior lecturer at the Center for Interdisciplinary & Special Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, where he teaches courses on the Holocaust and genocide as well as Native American, African-American and local history. Mr. Doughton is among African-Americans who can trace their ancestry in the Worcester area back to the 1700s. Thomas Hazard, the great-great-great-great grandfather of Mr. Doughton, who is also part Nipmuc Indian, was a soldier of the Revolutionary War. Several other ancestors were part of the prestigious 54th Regiment, the first black Northern regiment to serve in the Civil War. Video by Tom Rettig. Read more at telegram.com, http://www.telegram.com/article/20120...