Allan Rohan Crite

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Allan Rohan Crite

Allan Rohan Crite (1910 - ) is Boston's most distinguished Black artist and art historian, noted for an eclectic range of subjects - from religious themes to neighborhood scenes. His religious artwork can be seen in the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin on Lenox Street in lower Roxbury. His views of Blacks in an urban setting, Crite says 'present [people] in an ordinary light, persons enjoying the usual pleasures of life with its mixtures of both sorrows and joys.' Crite's works have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe and are in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Public Library, and Boston Athenaeum. His illustrated books, includingThe Christmas Message in Pictures andSome of the Colored Peoples of God, are collector's items.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Theodore Drury, who had earlier produced operas with Black casts in New York City, organized and trained a Black company in Boston in the early years of the 20th century. In 1907 'Aida' and a scene from 'Carmen' were produced, and 'Faust' and 'Cavalleria Rusticana' in the following year.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Longest Tenure for a Black Minister

In 1980, Rev. Richard M. Owens completed 43 years of pastoring the historic Peoples Baptist Church, giving him the longest tenure for a Black minister in Boston's history. He was the first Black elected President of the American Baptist Convention of Massachusetts in 1969.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

New England Slave Trade

The year 1644 was a momentous date in the history of the New England slave trade. Before that time Massachusetts merchants had occasionally brought in Black Africans from the West Indies; but in that year Boston traders imported slaves directly from Africa, when an association of businessmen sent

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Racial Imbalance Act

The Massachusetts Racial Imbalance Act, spearheaded by Boston's African-American community, was passed in 1965, making Massachusetts the first state in the nation to outlawde facto segregation in a school district.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Roland Hayes, Vocal Artist

Roland Hayes, who gained national and international fame as a classical concert artist, launched his career in Boston's Symphony Hall in 1917. He lived, studied, and worked in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts, from 1912 until his death in 1977. In 1921 the noted tenor gave a command performance

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

90 Black Churches

The number of Black churches in Boston grew from two in 1830 to five by 1850. One was the Free Church, later named Tremont Temple, established in 1836 as an integrated church protesting segregated seating in Boston's white churches. Today there are over 90 churches that 'identify with the

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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

All-American Football Star

William H. Lewis, an All-American football star at Harvard, is credited with inventing the 'roving center' defense strategy. He went on to a distinguished legal and political career in Boston.

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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

Academy of Musical Arts

The Academy of Musical Arts, founded by Anna Bobbit Gardner, has been providing music lessons in Boston for over 65 years. The Academy (originally called Pinaforte Studio) was started in the basement of her home on Claremont Park. When the school moved to its present site on Columbus Avenue, it

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

A group of Black women led by Wilhelmina Crosson started the Aristo Club in 1924 to teach African-American history in the Boston schools and Black community and to boost educational and cultural opportunities for Boston's Black youth. In 1926 the Club sponsored the first official Negro History Week

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

In 1975 Angela Paige Cook with her husband Joseph Cook founded Paige Academy in the Highland Park section of Roxbury. The academy has become a nationally recognized private pre-school and elementary school with the arts and sciences as vital components of the curriculum. As a unique community

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Young Masters of Ceremonies

Maceo Harris, a 12-year-old student at the Sherman School in Roxbury, was the master of ceremonies for Boston's observance of Benjamin Franklin's birthday anniversary in 1932. The ceremony was conducted in front of Franklin's statue on the lawn at City Hall. Mayor James Curley said of young

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley, a slave in Boston who gained her freedom in 1772, became the first African-American to publish a book of poetry,Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African-Americans in 1790

There were 766 African-Americans (4 percent of the population) counted in Boston in the first United State Census in 1790.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Jazz Concert in Boston Church

A jazz concert of sacred music by the legendary Duke Ellington and his orchestra was performed at Union Methodist Church in July, 1966, the first time a jazz performance had been held in a Boston church.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Stable/Livery Business

African-American businessman Henry C. Turner (1852-1919) owned a boarding stable and garage (1890-1919) and operated a large livery business in Boston, servicing a mostly white clientele. Constructed in 1900, his stable and garage, always ready with horses, buggies, and carriages for hire, still

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

James Monroe Trotter

In 1885 James Monroe Trotter published a widely acclaimed book, Music and Some Highly Musical People, a tribute to some 200 Black groups and individuals for their musical achievement in Boston and the United States during the 1800s.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church

St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church was the first church built in Roxbury by Black people. Serving as a haven for immigrants from the West Indian islands in the early 1900s, St. Cyprian's was established in 1913. The cornerstone of its present building on Tremont Street was laid in 1923 and the church

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Firefighters Association

The Vulcans, Boston's African-American firefighters' association, was formed in 1972. At that time there had been only 17 Black and Hispanic firemen in the history of the city's fire department. When the Vulcans filed a court suit against the city of Boston for discrimination in hiring

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Political Writer

Hailed as America's first Black political writer, Maria W. Stewart, an early Boston activist, championed women's rights and Black self-improvement in a series of speeches and essays written between 1831 and 1833. She was probably the first Black American to lecture publicly in defense of

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

'Little Chocolate' Dixon

Boxer George 'Little Chocolate' Dixon (1870-1908) of Boston was the first Black to win both the featherweight and bantamweight championships.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Sergeant William E. Carter (1858-1918), for whom the Carter Playground in Boston's South End is named, served in the Spanish-American War, the Massachusetts National Guard from 1899 to 1917, and in World War I, where he was killed in action in October 1918.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

National Negro Business League

The National Business League was founded in Boston in 1900 by Booker T. Washington 'to bring the colored people who are engaged in business together for consultation, and to secure information and inspiration from each other.' More than 400 business people from 34 states attended the convention in

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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

First Abolitionist Group

When a group of Black Bostonians founded the Massachusetts General Colored Association in 1826 to fight for an end to slavery, they became Boston's primary abolition organization.

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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

Renowned Voice and Piano Teacher

For over 60 years Rebecca Ellastine Lee Broadnax (1893-1987) was a renowned voice and piano teacher in greater Boston. For teenagers she founded the Cantemus Club in 1934, a group of 24 students who presented concerts and recitals in Boston and throughout New England until 1952. She organized the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Martha's Vineyard

For more than 100 years the island of Martha's Vineyard (seven miles off the southeast coast of Massachusetts) has been an important summertime haven for Black Bostonians. In the late 1800s Blacks first came to the island to work for whites and some earned enough money to gain small summer vacation

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Engineer/Bridge Designer

Harold B. Frye (1902-1989), a civil engineer with the Massachusetts Department of Public Works for over 40 years, was responsible for the design of many bridges throughout the state during his career. Born in Boston, he graduated in 1925 with a degree in engineering from Northeastern University and

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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