Bay State Golf Association

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Bay State Golf Association

The Bay State Golf Association was founded in 1938 by Black golfers from Medford and Boston. In these early years they played at Sagamore Springs in Lynnfield, one of the few golf courses open to Blacks. Bay State's first annual tournament was held in 1940 at Ponkapoag Golf Club in Canton. This 52-year-old association continues each summer with its annual tournaments and fund-raising activities to promote the game among young people.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Lawyer before Supreme Court

John Sweat Rock (1825-1866), a noted Boston lawyer, became in 1865 the first African-American to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and the first Black person to speak before the U.S. House of Representatives.

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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

'Mother of the Year'

In 1952 Madeline Kountze Dugger Kelly of Medford became the first Black woman to be named Massachusetts Mother of the Year.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Printing Business

In 1838 Benjamin Roberts established Boston's first Black-owned and operated printing business.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

20th-Century Novelist

Dorothy West, born in 1910 and raised in Boston, became a leading novelist, short-story writer, editor, and columnist. Her novelThe Living Is Easy (about growing up Black in Boston) was published in 1948; currently she writes a column for theVineyard Gazette on Martha's Vineyard Island.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First School Principal

The first African-American to be appointed as a school principal in the Boston Public Schools was Gladys Wood. Appointed in 1966 to administer the Dearborn district (composed of three elementary schools), she then moved into the Tileston district and to the Chittick School, serving for 15 years as

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African Meeting House

In 1806 free Blacks in Boston, led by Cato Gardner, raised $7,700 to enable Black craftsmen and laborers to build the African Meeting House. The Meeting House served as an anchor for the Black settlement on Beacon Hill throughout the 1800s. Until 1898 the Meeting House served as the home of the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Media and Political Strategist

In 1986 the Boston Globe called media and political strategist Joyce Ferriabough, the only woman to break into the campaign managers' circle when she guided Charles Yancey's historic run for State Auditor. Regularly quoted in the news media for her views on political trends, especially as they

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Slavery Law in Massachusetts

Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth were the first colonies to authorize slavery through legislation as part of the1641 Body of Liberties, a mere three years after the first Blacks arrived in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Legendary NAACP Leader

From her arrival in Boston in 1927 until her death at age 94, E. Alice Taylor (1892-1986) served as a business woman, church leader, and Boston NAACP official, leaving a legend of 58 continuous years of community service. For 50 years she served as an officer and board member of the Boston branch

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leads Rally

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

Adelphic Union Library Association

Boston's early 19th-century Black community was concerned with education and cultural needs. In 1838 the Adelphic Union Library Association was formed to encourage intellectual debates and offer lectures. At a time when women were generally excluded from public lectures, the Adelphic Union opened

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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

Writer of Race Politics

During the first quarter of the 20th century George W. Forbes (1864-1927) was an important journalist for national race politics. From 1893 to 1903, he edited the Boston Courant, one of Boston's early Black newspapers. He helped start the Boston Guardian, founded and published by William M. Trotter

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Elma Lewis School

The Elma Lewis School was established in 1950 to give expert training in the arts to children, youth, and adults. Its students have performed on Broadway and in symphony orchestras. During its 40 years of existence, the School has been producing professional artists and changing the quality of life

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Female President of NAACP Branch

In 1948, when Florence LeSuerer was elected president of Boston's branch of the NAACP, she became the first woman in the country to head a local NAACP chapter. She served as branch president from 1948 to 1951.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Black Neighborhood

Between 1800 and 1900 most of Boston's African American residents lived in the West End, between Pinckney and Cambridge Streets and between Joy and Charles Streets - a neighborhood now called the north slope of Beacon Hill.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Legendary Jazz Pianist

Sabby Lewis has become a legendary jazz pianist and band leader in Boston. He organized his first band in Boston in 1936. In 1942 his musical talent was recognized when he was chosen to perform a Sunday-night NBC radio broadcast. In the 1950s and 1960s he played on Broadway in New York City and at

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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

Pioneering Black Historian

William C. Nell of Boston, an early writer-reporter for the Liberator, was also a pioneering Black historian, havingwritten Services of the Colored Americans in the Wars 1776 and 1812 (1852) andThe Colored Patriots of the American Revolution with Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons to

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Ward 9 Politicians

From Boston's 'old' Ward 9 in the Beacon Hill area, Boston's Black citizens were able to elect 20 Black persons to public office - to the city council, the state legislature, and school committee - during the second half of the 19th century.

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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

Boston Bank of Commerce

Incorporated on June 30, 1982, with Juan M. Cofield as its leading founder and president from 1982-1983, Boston Bank of Commerce is the only fully insured Black-owned and operated bank in Boston and New England. A successor to Unity Bank and Trust, Boston's first Black-owned Bank, the Boston Bank

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population 1910-1980

By 1910 Boston's Black population was 13,500, and in 1940 it was only 23,000. Between 1940 and 1960 the Black population of Boston jumped to 63,000, and by 1980 it was approximately 120,000.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Oldest Funeral Home

The J. B. Johnson Funeral Home, established in 1932, and the Davis Funeral Home, established in 1935 - both still in business - are two of the oldest continuously performing establishments providing services to Black families in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneering Public Servant

Clarence Richard Elam (1923-1985) performed as a pioneering public servant as Assistant Director of Civil Defense for the City of Boston form 1950-52, Executive Secretary of the Governor's Council (1952-56), Chairman of the Boston Licensing Board (1956-74), and Special Assistant to Attorney General

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston Afro-American Artists, Inc.

The Boston Afro-American Artists, Inc. ( BAAA) - (formerly the Boston Negro Artists Association) - was organized in 1963 by J. Marcus Mitchell and Calvin Burnett to stimulate the development of and appreciation for the visual arts within the Black community. Incorporated in 1966, the BAAA developed

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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

Boston's Underground Railroad

In the decades prior to the Civil War, Blacks in Boston were prominent in developing and operating one of the principal stations of the 'Underground Railroad' that helped escaped slaves from the South find refuge in the North or in Canada. From his home at 66 Phillips Street on Beacon Hill (now

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Black Reporter

Bob Teanoh was perhaps the first African-American reporter for a white newspaper in Boston, having obtained a staff position in 1890 withThe Boston Daily Globe. He was elected to the state legislature in 1894.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Politics Facts

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