Weeks after arriving in Boston in 1962 as an 18-year-old freshman at Boston University, Julian T. Houston took to the streets to address racial inequities.
“I was going to Roxbury on the weekends to work on a boycott of the Wonder Bread factory there,” he told The Boston Globe in 2018. “The Black community was buying their goods there, but there were no representatives on the employment side.”
Before graduating, he became the first Black student elected to lead BU’s student government, posting a victory that was “the largest plurality ever accorded a Student Congress presidential victor,” the Globe reported in 1966.
In the decades that followed, he served as a Roxbury District Court judge and as a Superior Court associate justice. During his judicial tenure, he reached beyond the bench to help launch programs that offered alternative paths for court-involved youths, promoted advancement of people of color in law enforcement and judicial system jobs, and provided childcare for those appearing in court.
“He was the real thing — a man who gave himself to the cause of social justice, but not in an abstract way at all. He did so with deep humanity,” said the writer James Carroll, his longtime friend. “He was the best of us.”
Judge Houston, who also was a novelist and worked to bring musicians into city schools to promote the arts, was 82 when he died Sept. 10. He lived in Brookline and his health had been declining.
“As a public figure, he was a catalyst for change — bettering and enriching the lives of others,” said his wife, Susan Houston, former executive director of the nonprofit MassEcon, which helps companies relocate or expand in the state. “He dreamed big and inspired those around him to help bring those dreams to life.”
Judge Houston is among the civil rights heroes whose names are inscribed in paving stones around “The Embrace,” the Boston Common sculpture honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Along with his Boston activism, he took time off from college to work as a community organizer in Harlem during the civil rights era.
He also was a force behind “Long Road to Justice: The African American Experience in Massachusetts Courts.”
In 2018, the traveling multimedia exhibition was permanently installed in the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse, named for the late Massachusetts politician who was the first popularly elected Black US senator.
“I think that for a lot of young lawyers — and I was a young lawyer when I first met Judge Houston — the idea that there was somebody like us on the bench was affirming and aspirational,” former governor Deval Patrick told the Globe in 2018, when “Long Road” opened at the courthouse.
“Pardon the superlatives, but this guy is just an extraordinary human being,” former governor Michael S. Dukakis, who appointed Judge Houston to both of his judicial posts, told the Globe then.
During Judge Houston’s early years at Roxbury District Court, he was taken aback by the sight of young children accompanying adults who appeared before him.
“The only place for them was to sit in the courtroom, where they were exposed to all kinds of descriptions of violence and drugs,” he told the Globe in 2018. “It was awful. I said, ‘We can do better than this.’”
He went on to establish court-based child-care centers that provided children with places to stay in more than a dozen Massachusetts court buildings, until funding was cut in the early 2000s.
Linking historical accomplishments to modern-day activism, Judge Houston also helped found the George Lewis Ruffin Society in 1984. Ruffin was the first Black graduate of Harvard Law School, and the first Black candidate elected to the Boston City Council.
The society, now based at Northeastern University, supports “the advancement of minorities in the field of criminal justice and the legal field at large,” according to its website.
Judge Houston played a key role in founding the nonprofit Roxbury Youthworks, which opened in 1981 and now offers a range of programs to help guide the lives of at-risk youths. A committee he convened recommended that Youthworks be launched.
“He dedicated his life to helping any youths who were at risk in the City of Boston,” said Mia Alvarado, the agency’s executive director. He also served on its board, and stepped down as president about five years ago.
She added that Judge Houston “was one of the kindest, most caring men that I knew.”
Born in Richmond, Va., on July 19, 1944, Julian Towns Houston was an only child. His mother, Alice Jackson Stuart, was an educator. She and Julian’s father divorced, and after she remarried, Judge Houston grew up in New Jersey with her and his stepfather, Dr. J. Earle Stuart, a physician.
Judge Houston graduated from the private Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., before going to Boston University.
“I was miserable there,” he told the Globe in 2006. “But it taught me how to write, and it changed my outlook on life by making me aware of what the upper class — the aristocracy, and there is one — is about, and I am not intimidated by that now.”
He graduated from Boston University with a bachelor’s degree in government, and from Boston University School of Law.
After working for a summer in Washington, D.C., with consumer advocate Ralph Nader, Judge Houston returned to Boston to direct the juvenile justice project at what is now Massachusetts Advocates for Children.
Dukakis appointed him to serve on the Roxbury District Court bench, securing Judge Houston’s Executive Council confirmation on the final day of his first term as governor.
In the 1990s, Dukakis appointed him to the Superior Court bench, where Judge Houston served until retiring in 2006.
Judge Houston and Susan Levine met at Boston University and married in 1971.
“The private man loved music, was a deep reader of fiction, and in later life took his hand to short stories and published the novel ‘New Boy,’” she said.
His affection for music included working with the Boston Symphony Orchestra to create a program that brought musicians to Boston public schools and, in turn, sent students to the orchestra’s Youth Concerts.
Susan added that her husband was a mentor to many, “a talented cook, and a wonderful husband and father.”
In addition to his wife, Judge Houston leaves a son, Daniel; a daughter, Elisabeth; and a grandson.
A gathering to celebrate Judge Houston’s life and work will be announced.
Reflecting on his work beyond the demands of hearing cases and presiding over trials, Judge Houston said in a 1999 interview with Bostonia, Boston University’s alumni magazine, that he was “a different sort of judicial activist” who tried to find innovative ways to address society’s problems.
“I think I am atypical, and maybe even considered a judicial Don Quixote,” he told Bostonia. “Judges are not expected to do the kinds of things that I do.”
Carroll, who delivered the eulogy at a graveside burial service, recalled in a phone interview that he would occasionally drop by to sit in the back of courtrooms where Judge Houston presided, just to see his friend at work.
“I was edified by what I saw, by the way he administered justice with compassion and clarity,” Carroll said. “He never forgot that the people in front of him were human beings, no matter what they were charged with or why they were there.”
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.