State Representative Byron Rushing is the son of a janitor and a Jamaican immigrant who worked as a seamstress. He became a community organizer serving low-income residents in struggling neighborhoods. He later led Boston’s Museum of African American History. Under his direction, the museum purchased and restored the African Meeting House, the oldest black church still standing in the United States. It was the heart of Boston’s 19th century free black community and center of the Abolitionist movement.
In 1982, Byron was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He represents most of the South End and the Fenway and parts of Back Bay and Roxbury that border on those neighborhoods.
He is now the highest-ranking black official in the Massachusetts State Legislature, and the 4th highest-ranking member of the House leadership team. He has always championed issues of justice and equality — and the daily concerns of constituents — and does it today with broad influence that benefits those he represents.
Byron was an original sponsor of the gay rights bill and the chief sponsor of the law to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in public schools. He was a leader in the fight to maintain same sex marriage in Massachusetts. He successfully co-sponsored the transgender civil rights bills. His work in these areas of civil rights is the subject of the short film, “Marriage Equality: Byron Rushing and the Fight for Fairness”
Byron has been an effective leader on issues of homelessness, affordable housing, the opioid epidemic, and treatment-on-demand. He co-chairs the state’s Health Disparities Council.
He has created change on sprawling issues of civil rights, gun safety, and criminal justice reform, and brings equal passion to daily concerns like neighborhood pedestrian safety, traffic stops, the preservation of sunlight when tall buildings are planned, and guidelines for how emergency rooms handle victims of violence.
Last year, he was named to a small working group to guide House responses to unprecedented actions of the Trump administration. The group is designed to protect Massachusetts from impacts on economic stability, health care, higher education, and the state’s most vulnerable residents.
An active Episcopalian, Byron is Vice-President of the House of Deputies of its General Convention — the highest elected position held by a layperson in The Episcopal Church.
To read more about issues and legislation Byron has passed and is working on, click here.