By Bill Wright and Barry Lawton
February 24, 2021
Doris Bunte
Doris Bunte, who died on Feb. 15 at age 87, was a wonderful woman, a magnificent mentor, and a prodigious politician. The word that describes her best is “Mother.” Doris was that, yes, and also a mother, a grandmother, and a great-grandmother. She was also a mother to many more than her biological offspring.
As the first African-American woman elected to the Massachusetts Legislature, she was a political trailblazer who was involved in politics for all of the right reasons: She wanted to use political action to improve the lives and the living conditions of Black people in Boston’s neighborhoods whose needs were, sometimes, overwhelming. She wanted to give Black and Brown people a voice, and a seat, at the tables where political decisions were made at the local, state and federal levels – it was a voice that had rarely been heard in those settings.