Newly hired in 1973 to teach social studies at Barnstable High School, John Reed stepped into a part of Massachusetts where people of color were far fewer than in his Boston childhood.
“I guess I got insulted,” he told the Cape Cod Times, “when people looked at me and said, ‘Oh, you’re a teacher?’ "
For Mr. Reed, teaching was more of a calling than a profession, something he did in the classroom and with union colleagues, in the NAACP, and in Cape Cod’s neighborhoods.
“John was instrumental in bringing people together and getting them to march in unity,” said Jeanne Morrison, who chairs the Barnstable County Human Rights Advisory Commission. “He was really building unity among all the people in our community, and he helped open doors to diverse communities.”
A high school history teacher for more than 35 years, Mr. Reed helped write new chapters in the Cape’s history for people of color through ventures such as the Zion Union Heritage Museum, whose board he led. Mr. Reed, who had lived in West Yarmouth for many years, was 72 when he died Feb. 10 of complications from Parkinson’s disease and a stroke in September.
“He was a leader in so many ways, that’s the thing about him,” said Julia Johnson, a former Barnstable High colleague who began leading the museum’s board, after Mr. Reed’s death. “Some people lead in business, some people lead in education. John led in many ways. Whatever he was involved with, he became a leader.”
Working with Harold Tobey and others, Mr. Reed helped launch the museum, which opened about 15 years ago and features historic contributions from the Cape’s Black, Cape Verdean, and Mashpee Wampanoag residents.
“Before we started the museum,” Mr. Reed said in 2019, “where could we find a repository that talked about people of color on Cape Cod? There was no one single place that celebrated everybody.”
Mr. Reed had served as president, chairman, or held high leadership roles at the museum and in the Cape Cod chapter of the NAACP, the NAACP’s New England area conference, the teachers’ union, and the Barnstable County Human Rights Advisory Commission, which he helped establish.
“He was about making the lives of people around him better,” said Carl Lopes, an artist and former Barnstable High teacher who first met Mr. Reed when they were University of Massachusetts Amherst students.
“Between being the head of the NAACP and starting different types of organizations, in terms of equity and human rights, he continually worked not only within the school system, but was intertwined with the community,” said Lopes, a Zion Union Heritage Museum board member.
Mr. Reed “was an incredible person,” said state Representative Kip Diggs, a Barnstable Democrat. “I knew him before I even started going to school.”
Before Diggs had Mr. Reed as a teacher, and before Diggs became a champion welterweight boxer and politician, he knew Mr. Reed as a wise family friend.
“He was very influential with my parents and in the community,” Diggs said.
“And when I became his student, he taught us so much,” Diggs added. “He was a father figure, mentor, brother, best friend — he was all those encompassing things when we were in school, and he watched over us to make sure we did the right thing.”
Mr. Reed “was a stalwart individual,” said Carolyne Lamar Jordan, a friend who served as dean of academic affairs at Cape Cod Community College for five years at the end of the 1990s.
“He had integrity,” she said, “and he didn’t run from social and cultural and civic and political fights for our people.”
The third of five siblings, John Reed was born in Boston on Sept. 28, 1950, and grew up in Dorchester and Roxbury.
In a 2008 interview with the Cape Cod Times, when he was preparing to retire from teaching, Mr. Reed recalled that his parents, George Reed Sr. and Rachel Huff Reed, both held multiple jobs when he was a boy.
Mr. Reed and Karen Reggler were teenagers in Dorchester when they met. She said that in middle school and at Dorchester High School he already was a teacher, long before that became his career.
“He was smart in history and became a tutor for students who had difficulty,” she said. “I found that admirable.”
As Mr. Reed was finishing high school, “I was told maybe I could get into community college,” he said in the Cape Cod Times interview. When he said he wanted to aim higher, a guidance counselor insisted that his parents couldn’t shoulder the cost of a more expensive school.
Setting aside that advice, Mr. Reed went to UMass Amherst, from which he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in education. He worked jobs along the way to support his studies and immersed himself in key activities.
“Whenever we had any functions that had to do with people of color on campus, he was always there,” Lopes said.
In 1973, Mr. Reed began teaching at Barnstable High, and in 1977 he married Karen, who is a retired elementary school teacher.
During his career as an educator, Mr. Reed also served as the high school’s attendance and equity officer.
“He taught social studies and US history, and he also offered an African-American history course, which I took for the four years of high school,” said Morrison, who is copresident of the League of Women Voters of the Cape Cod Area.
“The value of that is that I had a teacher who looked like me,” she said. “To have this whole world opened up that spoke to me about who I am — it was invaluable to have that identity nurtured, if you will, by John from a history perspective, but also as a mentor.”
Mr. Reed launched the Human Rights Academy, which guided students in various schools as they conceived and completed projects focusing on human rights. He also started the Imani Club for students of color, its name borrowed from a Swahili word for faith and belief.
For his work as an educator and activist, Mr. Reed has been honored by the National Education Association with the H. Councill Trenholm Memorial Award and by the Barnstable Human Rights Advisory Commission with the Rosenthal Community Champion Award.
In 2021, the Black and Latino Legislative Caucus recognized Mr. Reed as a trailblazer in its Black Excellence on the Hill ceremony.
“John taught people to walk with dignity — how to carry yourself and hold your head high,” Morrison said.
In addition to his wife, Karen, Mr. Reed leaves his brother, George Jr. of North Carolina; and his stepfather, Willoughby Harris of Boston.
A funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Roxbury.
“I’ve lost my best friend,” Mr. Reed’s wife said. “He was a very loving individual.”
Mr. Reed “left a legacy of human engagement and service that’s carried out by many people. Through his lifetime he’s taught and guided people of all ages and all walks of life,” said Morrison, who noted that like her, many of those whom Mr. Reed mentored went on to be activists.
“That’s quite a tribute, if you have that many people carrying on your work,” she added. “He was a guiding force for unity. It’s taking a whole village of us to do the work John did.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.