Natalicia Tracy came to Boston two decades ago seeking opportunity, but found herself little more than a slave.
The family that brought her from her native Brazil as a teenager to work as a nanny paid her only $25 per week, she said, and forced her to sleep year-round on a three-season porch. They prevented her from receiving mail from home and told her that long-distance calls to family were too expensive, Tracy said.
Today, as executive director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center in Allston, Tracy works to ensure that other immigrants will not suffer in isolation as she did.
Earlier this month, she was one of four social justice crusaders named 2013 fellows by the Petra Foundation, inducted into a society, now based in New York but founded in Boston, that carries on a tradition formalized 25 years ago but that stretches back to a group of young idealists in the late 1960s.
Each fellow receives a $7,500 stipend, which most apply to their work. More than that, they gain recognition for efforts often carried out in streets and courthouses far from public attention.
Tracy said her dedication to service was inspired by her mother’s example.
“I used to see my mom being very giving with everything,” said Tracy, 41. “She taught us that our life is very precious and it’s short, and what we have to take with us are the good things we do for others.”
The story of the foundation’s namesake, Petra Tölle Shattuck, shares parallels with Tracy’s.
Born in Germany during World War II, Shattuck immigrated to the United States in 1960 to be an au pair for an American family. Unlike Tracy’s employers, Shattuck’s host family recognized her intelligence and supported her educational aspirations. With their encouragement, she earned a bachelor’s degree and then a doctorate, becoming a college professor and a crusader for Native American rights.
Amid the political tumult of the late 1960s, she met and married fellow activist John Shattuck, who would become a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and later a vice president at Harvard University and chief executive of the John F. Kennedy Library. Together they had three children.
Friends and family said Petra Shattuck was warm and thoughtful, but no shrinking violet.
Nancy Gertner, 67, a Harvard Law School professor and retired federal judge who was her best friend, recalled a Christmas party when her older son was 2 and her younger son was an infant.
“Everyone went gaga over the baby,” Gertner said. “Petra took Stephen, the oldest, by the hand and talked to him for hours. . . . It was a classic of her understanding that the older child was going to be ignored, and she was going to fill the gap.”
Scott Armstrong, 67, a former Washington Post reporter and longtime family friend, remembered Petra Shattuck correcting ideas ingrained in him since childhood about the assimilation of Native Americans into the “melting pot” of American society.
“I got a real education about it, how they were forced to give up their culture, how they were forced to abandon everything that was important to them in a forced assimilation,” he said. “She wouldn’t mince words. It was like, ‘Oh, no, no, you don’t understand,’ and then you’d get a blast of it.”
In March 1988, Shattuck had begun a new chapter of her life, having recently joined the Boston law firm of Palmer & Dodge, when she died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at 46.
Her husband and friends, all committed to social justice, created a foundation in her name that would highlight the work of others who shared their values. Gertner said the foundation is an extension of the Shattuck kitchen table, where interesting people from many backgrounds would gather for passionate discussions of social issues.
John Shattuck, 70, said in a phone interview that the organization named for his late wife is still informally known as “the kitchen table foundation.”
“It grew out of this terrible loss that we all — and, in particular, our family — felt,” he said. “But it grew into a celebration of the achievements of people dedicated to social justice.”
Each year’s fellows are selected from 50 to 60 nominees, he said.
In addition to Tracy, this year’s fellows are Grace Bauer, executive director of Justice for Families, a Baltimore-based organization working to reform the juvenile justice system; Rey Faustino, founder of San Francisco-based One Degree, a Web platform for accessing social services; and Juan Haro, director of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, a New York City organization working to preserve low-income housing.
Earlier this month, the foundation held its annual awards dinner and reunion weekend. The event brings together hundreds of past foundation fellows with others working for social justice.
Tracy, the director of the Brazilian Immigrant Center, attended the Friday night awards dinner but missed Saturday’s events. As usual, she was working, huddled with more than 100 domestic workers inside a church in Bridgeport, Conn., drafting a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights to present to Connecticut state legislators similar to a bill that, thanks to Tracy and other activists, is under consideration on Beacon Hill.
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JeremyCFox.