Swampscott S.U.R.E. Founding Member A Local Black Excellence Honoree

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Swampscott S.U.R.E. Diversity founding member Ralph Edwards will be celebrated as a Local Black Excellence honoree at a Lynn City Hall ceremony next week.

The North Shore Juneteenth Association will honor Edwards at a 6:30 p.m. event after he was nominated for the award by St. Mary's of Lynn track and cross country coach Tristan Smith.

The Juneteenth Association and its events commemorate June 19, 1865, the date that enslaved Black people of Galveston, Texas, learned that President Abraham Lincoln had freed enslaved people in rebel states two and a half years earlier. The Association hosts regional cultural and
educational events.

Edwards built his knowledge and skills through college at Tulane University, and two Master's Degrees, an MPH at the University of Texas and an MPA at Harvard's Kennedy School. With a love of creative writing and poetry, including currently at a Swampscott Senior Center writing group, he refined his work in advocating for causes he cared about.

Edwards has started and led community organizations and state agencies, advocating for African American history, and developing programs for youth and the developmentally disabled.

In the 1980s, he worked at the MA Department of Public Health as Regional Director of the Department of Substance Abuse and later, Director of AIDS Education. He then served as the new Director of the Office of Citizen Leadership at the MA Dept. Of Developmental Disabilities.

Starting in 2014, he was President of national TASH, which advocates for those with developmental disabilities.

He has served on the Board of YMCA of the North Shore, chaired the Swampscott Democratic Committee for many years, was on the MA Democratic State Committee, was a founding member in 2016 of Swampscott S.U.R.E. Diversity, was a member of the Town of Swampscott's Civil Service Review Committee and its Police Chief Search Committee.

Previously, he was on the Board of the Boston NAACP and the Greater Boston American Red Cross.

He also leads S.U.R.E. Diversity's TUYS project. TUYS, Tell Us Your Story, encourages Swampscott residents to write about their first ancestor they know of who came to America, and their stories. The Swampscott Library works with S.U.R.E. to archive residents' stories.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)