90-year-old joins music fraternity 69 years after taking a stand against discrimination

A person playing the piano.
(Image credit: Dave Thompson/Getty Images)

When Shirley Shapiro was a 21-year-old student at Boston University, she took a stand against discrimination, and now, 69 years later, she is being recognized for following her conscience.

Shapiro, 90, told the Concord Journal that when she was a music student at the university, she was invited to join the Mu Phi Epsilon fraternity. She was excited to be part of the organization, until she found out black students were not allowed to join the BU chapter. "Who wants to join a group like that?" she asked. She went on to teach second and fourth grade in Boston for 32 years, and when her nephew Mark Shapiro found out what she did all those years ago, he contacted Rosemary Ames, the international president of Mu Phi Epsilon.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.