Atkins (Thomas I.) is born in Elkhart, Indiana.

The son of a Pentecostal minister and a domestic, Thomas Atkins comes to Boston in 1962 to attend first graduate school then law school at Harvard University. He becomes executive director of the Boston Branch NAACP in 1963, and serves on the Boston City Council (1968-71). Atkins lives at 54 Townsend Street. After an unsuccessful campaign for mayor in 1971,* Atkins goes on to serve as Massachusetts Secretary of Communities and Development and president of the Boston Branch NAACP. He leaves Boston to become general counsel for the national NAACP in 1980 and dies in New York on June 27, 2008.