Kenneth L. Janey
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Kenneth Lawrence Janey, son of Daniel and Clara (Johnson) Janey was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1920 and was raised in Boston, where he attended high school. Kenneth worked as an apprentice at an upholstery shop before owning his own business in Boston called Janey's Upholstery, which he maintained into the 1960s.
Janey enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, serving from June 15, 1942 until December 30, 1945 as a technical sergeant and took photographs for the Tuskegee Airmen.
Janey married Daisy Thompson, with whom he raised four children. They moved to Blaisdell Road in Hingham in the 1950s. While living in Hingham, Janey fought to gain equality for black citizens like himself. He was an active member of the Hingham Freedom Movement, serving for a time as its president. The Hingham Freedom Movement focused on educating residents about black history and the civil rights movement as well as on improving the lives of African-Americans in eastern Massachusetts.
Janey was also one of the founders of the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, Inc. (METCO). Keenly aware of the de facto segregation in the Boston Public Schools, Janey and METCO worked toward busing inner-city students to suburban schools, including to Hingham. In 1967 Janey asked the Hingham Public Schools to participate in the program, and by 1969, there were sixteen METCO students attending school in the town.
In the 1970s, Janey dedicated himself to working for Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), an organization striving to help individuals and families overcome poverty. Founded in 1961, ABCD ran several school programs and owned multiple neighborhood resource centers. Janey worked as a job trainer for unemployed, low-income individuals and managed several of the organization's Neighborhood Employment Centers. He eventually became the director of all job training programs, and remained with ABCD until the early 1980s.
Many quotes and writings from Janey express a desire for peace and his hope that all citizens would participate in making the world a better place. He and his family marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Roxbury and attended multiple conferences on equality.
He remained in Hingham until his death on November 21, 1982.
One of the main purposes of the Hingham Freedom Movement was to work with other groups on the South Shore to educate residents about the civil rights movement and race issues.
"Each program will consist of a forty-minute lecture, by a noted speaker, on the place of the Negro in the United States, after which the audience will separate into small groups, for the purpose of discussing what they have heard."
Janey and the Hingham Freedom Movement worked to develop new curricula for the public schools and diversity training for teachers. The goal was to integrate black history education into the public schools and help teachers to understand the legacy of racism and slavery in the United States. In order to do this they worked with such organizations as the League of Women Voters and the Hingham School Department.
This report, partially written by Janey, includes a quote from his eulogy for MLK delivered in Hingham on April 7, 1968. He wrote, "The enemy is people, singularly or collectively, who permit the existence of a climate in this country where a Martin Luther King, Jr. can be assassinated for preaching justice, for preaching equality, for preaching non-violence."
On March 7, 1969, Janey’s wife Daisy wrote to the Hingham Journal explaining that METCO allowed black students to travel outside of their own school district and receive a better education elsewhere. The aim of METCO was "quality education,” not integration, but that this was an added benefit. She also quoted her husband as saying that integration would allow students to excel in the wider “multiethnic world.”
As an employee of ABCD in the 1970s and early 1980s, Janey was one of many people giving personal assistance to impoverished Greater Boston residents. His work was so valued by Bostonians that the City Council of Boston declared November 16, 1982 to be "Kenneth L. Janey Day."