19th-Century Statesman

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19th-Century Statesman

Julius C. Chappelle had one of the most successful careers in Boston electoral politics of the late 19th century. He was elected to the Republican State Central Committee, the Boston City Council, and the state legislature. He served in the state House of Representatives from 1883 to 1886, the longest continuous tenure of any Black on Beacon Hill until Herbert Loring Jackson of Malden served from 1951 to 1954.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Africans in Boston Before 1638?

In 1638, eight years after the original settlement of Boston, a ship named Desire arrived in Boston with the first American slaves. Built in Marblehead, the merchant vessel brought its cargo of cotton, tobacco, and slaves from Providence Island in the Bahamas. There is reason to believe that Black

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Eureka Co-Operative Bank

David E. Crawford opened Eureka Co-Operative Bank in Boston in 1910, 'the only bank in the East owned and operated by â€˜Colored People.'' He was appointed a master in the Chancery by the Governor of Massachusetts in 1915, and in 1916 the citizens of Boston elected him as a delegate to the National

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston Common 'Out of Bounds'

In 1742, when whites feared uprisings against oppression from the heavy concentration of slaves in Boston, the Boston Common was 'out of bounds' for Blacks and American Indians. The Black community of the city fought this restriction, but it was not until July 4, 1836 that they were allowed to use

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Noted Immigration Lawyer

Attorney John W. Schenck (1869-1962), admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1914, was appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston in 1920 and held that position until 1933. During that time he handled most of the immigration cases in the Commonwealth.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

School Desegregation Suit

In 1972 a suit was filed by the Boston Branch NAACP against the Boston School Committee for maintaining a segregated school district and low quality education for its mostly Black student population. When Federal Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., ordered a school desegregation plan in Boston in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Brighton High Valedictorian

In 1911 an African-American girl, F. Marion Reed, was valedictorian of her class at Brighton High School. With an overall average of 95 for her four years of high school study, she was in the top ten of academically achieving students out of 1,291 graduates from Boston high schools in 1911.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Drop-A-Dime/Report-A-Crime, Inc.

This anti-drug program, Drop-A-Dime/Report-A-Crime, Inc., was founded in 1983 by Georgette Watson and Rev. Bruce Wall to combat the rampant drug trade, especially in the African-American communities. As an executive director, Watson used a telephone hot-line approach for anonymous callers to inform

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Leads Rally - Part 2

In April 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a graduate of Boston University School of Theology, led a march from Roxbury to a rally on Boston Common to protest the evils of school segregation in Boston. Dr. King spoke at the State House where he appealed to the Massachusetts legislature to end

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population in 1970

In 1970, 51 percent of Boston's African-Americans had been born outside of Massachusetts and had migrated to the state, and most of the newcomers (29 percent of the entire Black population) were of southern origin.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Breezy Meadows Camp

On May 1, 1936 the Robert Gould Shaw House bought Breezy Meadows Camp in Holliston, Massachusetts, which provided summer camping for Boston's Black children and youth until the mid 1960s.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

19th-Century Sculptor

Edmonia Lewis (1845-1890) was America's first Black artist recognized for her reliefs and busts of great anti-slavery leaders and forForever Free, a composition of marble (completed in 1867) showing a man and woman overcome with emotion on hearing news of the emancipation from slavery. Lewis began

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Construction Worker's Union

In 1967 the United States Community Construction Workers, led by Leo Fletcher, became the first Black construction workers' union in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Long-Running TV Programs

'Say Brother,' produced by WGBH-TV (Channel 2) for the past 20 years, is the longest running television show targeted to the African-American and minority communities in Boston. 'Urban Update' (formerly 'Black News') on WHDH (Channel 7) is a close second with a nearly 18-year on-air history.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Preacher at Tremont Temple

Rev. John Sella Martin, who served as pastor of the Joy Street Baptist Church ( African Meeting House) around 1859, often served as guest preacher at the Tremont Temple, a mostly white congregation. He addressed worshippers at the Temple on January 1, 1863, when news of

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Published Novelist

William Wells Brown, a novelist, playwright, historian, essayist, lecturer, physician, and abolitionist, spent most of his life and published most of his work in Boston. He is especially noted forClotel: or The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Slavery Abolished in Massachusetts

The year 1773 saw increasing agitation among Blacks in Boston and Massachusetts for an end to slavery. On January 6, then in April, and again in May, they sent petitions first to royal General Thomas Gage and next to the Massachusetts legislature, denouncing slavery as destructive of natural rights

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Newspaper Publisher

In 1838 Benjamin Roberts (who worked for The Liberator under William Lloyd Garrison) established the Anti-Slavery Herald, intended to be an anti-slavery journal by and for Blacks in Boston. Only a few issues were printed. In 1853 Roberts tried again establishing a Black paper called Self Elevator.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Episcopal Priest

In 1894, at the Church of St. Augustine, Oscar Lieber Mitchell was the first African-American ordained into the priesthood of the Episcopal Church in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Episcopal Bishop

The Rev. John M. Burgess of Boston became the first African-American diocesan Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States in 1968.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Charles Lenox Remond

Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1873) was perhaps the boldest agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and possibly the most eloquent of the Black abolitionists of antebellum Boston. He had a national and international reputation as an anti-slavery leader, and was appointed as an American

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

NAACP Youth Council

Organized with 58 members from 25 different community youth groups and churches in 1936, the Boston Youth Council of NAACP held a mass meeting a year later protesting educational inequality in the Boston schools.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Two All-Black Fighting Units

There were two all-Black units, the Massasoit Guards and the Liberty Guards in Boston in the 1850s, but they were not attached to the militia of the State because there was opposition 'to there being any Colored men belonging to the State Militia.' Many of these men eventually joined the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Heritage Trail

The Black Heritage Trail on Beacon Hill in Boston is a walking tour which explores the history of the city's 19th-century African-American community. The tour was started in 1963 as an informal walking tour of some 10 sites by J. Marcus Mitchell, the first curator of the Museum of Negro History

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

School Desegregation in 1855

In September 1855, after a long boycott of Black-only schools led by William C. Nell and a petition to the legislature that schools in Boston be desegregated, Blacks in Boston were free to attend previously all-white schools.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston Guardian

The Boston Guardian newspaper, a major 20th-century civil rights publication, was founded in Boston in 1901 by William Monroe Trotter, who published the newspaper until his death in 1934. For the next 23 years (1934 - 1957), Trotter's sister, Maude Trotter Steward, and her husband, Dr. Charles

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Since 1949 Freedom House in Roxbury, founded by Muriel and Otto Snowden, has worked through bi-racial efforts to reduce barriers to education, employment, and housing opportunities for African-Americans in Boston. Growing from the ' Upper Roxbury Community Project,' started in the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Bay State Banner

The Bay State Banner, Boston's African-American newspaper founded in 1965 and published by Melvin Miller, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1990.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

The Fight for School Equality

In 1787 Primus Hall and other Black leaders petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for equal school facilities for Black children.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Grimes Oil Company

Calvin M. Grimes, Sr., founded Grimes Oil Company in Boston in 1940. Now operated by Calvin M. Grimes, Jr., this 50-year-old business started with one delivery truck, once serviced more than 3,000 residential customers, and now delivers gasoline, fuel oil, diesel fuel, and residual oil to

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Bolling Family: Political Phenomenon

The Bolling family represented a phenomenon unprecedented in Boston politics in the early 1980s, when three members held elective office at the same time - Royal Bolling, Sr., served as state senator, while his son Royal Bolling, Jr., served as state representative, and his son Bruce Bolling served

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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