William Monroe Trotter: Dorchester

William Monroe Trotter, a Harvard-educated journalist and civil rights activist, lived in a Dorchester house on Jones Hill with his wife Geraldine Louise Pindell. In the early 20th century Trotter started the Boston Literary and Historical Association, a forum for militant civil rights activists.

He also established The Guardian, a successful weekly newspaper that discussed race relations and derided the accommodationist policies of activist Booker T. Washington. He later formed the National Equal Rights League, while refusing to join the newly organized National Association on the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) because of its white leadership. Trotter died in 1934 on his 62nd birthday after a fall from the roof of this house.

The Trotter House is now a national historic landmark, but is not at present open to the public.