'Birth of a Nation' Protest

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'Birth of a Nation' Protest

In 1915 all of Boston's Black institutions, agencies, and community leaders united to protest the showing of the film, 'Birth of a Nation,' at the Tremont Theater because the film portrayed southern Blacks as depraved and glorified the Ku Klux Klan. Despite the collective protest, the city allowed the film to complete its scheduled run through the summer. Six years later when the film was scheduled for a rerun at the Shubert Theatre, William Monroe Trotter and the Boston NAACP forced the banning of the film with some 600 members of Boston's Black community attending the hearing on the film.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

De Facto Segregation Hearing

On June 4, 1963 the Education Committee of Boston's NAACP Branch called for a public hearing onde facto segregation in the city's public schools. At a June 11 hearing the committee presented its case on behalf of Black students.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Histrionic Club

The Histrionic Club, the first Black drama group in Boston, was founded in the late 1840s. Many of the plays it produced were written by William C. Nell.

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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

Art historian Edmund B. Gaither, curator and director of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, has been a leading spokesman for the Black artist in Boston for over 25 years. He is internationally known as an advocate of African-American visual artists and as a contributor to

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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

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

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

Rollins Griffith

Rollins Griffith (1925-1978) was the first African-American to assume the position of Assistant Superintendent of Schools in Boston with his appointment in 1970.

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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

Negro Business and Professional Women's Club

A vital force in Boston's business development for more than 30 years, the Boston Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs was organized in 1957 'to create and develop opportunities for African-American women in business and the professions and to protect their interests.'

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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

Distinguished Black Judge

Harry J. Elam became the first Black to serve as a Justice in the more than 300-year history of the Boston Municipal Court when he was appointed in 1971 as an Associate Justice. In 1978 he was the unanimous choice of the full bench of the Supreme Judicial Court to serve a five-year term as Chief

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

In 1787 Prince Hall founded Boston's African Lodge Number 459, the first African Masonic Lodge in the country and the beginning of Black Masonry in the United States. The Lodge, currently located at 18 Washington Street in the Grove Hall section of Dorchester, is one of the few Masonic lodges

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Judge

George L. Ruffin of Boston became the first African-American judge in Massachusetts with his appointment in 1883 to the District Court of Charlestown. He served in this position until his death in 1886. In 1869 he was the first African-American to earn a law degree from Harvard University. In 1984

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Edward L. Cooper, Sr.

In 1933 Edward L. Cooper, Sr., was the first African-American to be hired to manage a major food chain in Boston, the First National Store on Shawmut Avenue. From 1942-48 he was Deputy Secretary of the Urban League and served as Executive Secretary from 1948-54. From 1954-62 he served as the first

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

'Rider of Dreams'

In February 1927 the Boston Stage Society, an affiliate of the Ford Hall Forum, presented the first Negro play to gain a wide audience in Boston, 'The Rider of Dreams,' by Ridley Torrence.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black-Owned Hotels

There were three Black-owned and operated hotels in Boston in 1915: the Pitts, Carlton, and Melbourne.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Advocate for Community Development

Charles 'Chuck' Turner, executive director of the Center for Community Action, has been a community organizer, activist, and advocate for Boston's African-American community for over 20 years. He has a record of effectively organizing people to confront city and state agencies for jobs, affordable

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

In June 1968 Unity Bank, the first full-service Black bank in Boston, opened its doors for business. Approximately 70 percent of the $1.2 million in bank assets was raised by subscription in the Black community.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Nation of Islam Leader

Minister Louis Farrakhan, raised in Roxbury and a 1950 graduate of English High School, has been the national leader of the Nation of Islam since 1977, following the death of the founder of the Nation, Elijah Muhammad. While viewed by some as controversial, Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Nationally Known Dancer

Stanley E. Brown (1902-1977) was a nationally known dancer and dance instructor in Boston from 1929 to 1977. Founder of the Stanley Brown Dance Studio, he trained and coached hundreds of professionals. 'Sugar Ray' Robinson took tap lessons from Brown as did Cab Calloway, Diana Ross, and Lola

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Harriet Tubman House

In 1904 the Harriet Tubman House was founded in Boston's South End neighborhood by six Black women who donated their time, resources, and even their property to establish a settlement house to 'assist working girls (from the South) in charitable ways.' Julia O. Henson (a personal friend of

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

While The Liberator newspaper (1831-1869), founded by the militant white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, was an anti-slavery organ, it was also a journal for Black Americans throughout Boston and the East. The paper provided a network with its listing of death notices and social

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

John B. Cruz Construction Company

The John B. Cruz Construction Co., established in Boston in 1945, has expanded into one of the largest minority-owned construction firms in the U.S. This family-owned and operated business has constructed both housing and commercial complexes to revitalize Boston's Black neighborhoods.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Operation Exodus

Ellen Swepson Jackson was founder and executive director of Operation Exodus, a privately initiated inner-city busing program that began in 1965 to help Black students living near substandard schools to attend 'better' schools in other generally all-white neighborhoods in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Female Law Firm

Attorneys Margaret Burnham, Geraldine Hines, and Judith Dilday established the first Black female law firm in New England in 1989. Located in Boston, Burnham, Hines and Dilday specialize in family law, divorce, wills, custody, and civil and criminal litigation.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First City Lawyer

In the 1930s Julian Rainey became the first Assistant Corporation Counsel for the city of Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

20th-Century First

Lawrence Banks, a Republican, became the first African-American from Boston to serve in the Massachusetts legislature in the 20th century, when he was elected from Ward 9 in 1946. Banks also won election to the Boston City Council in 1949.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Slave Introduces Smallpox Vaccination

The ravages of smallpox were lessened in the 1700s because Onesimus, a slave to Cotton Mather in Boston, introduced an African vaccination practice that had made his body immune to the smallpox virus. Dr. Zabdiel Boylston of Boston inoculated some 240 people, following Onesimus's description of

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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