Black Nativity

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Black Nativity

'Black Nativity,' a folk-song rendering of the Christian story based on Langston Hughes's gospel song-play about the birth of Christ, has become an annual tradition in Boston since 1969. First presented in the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, it has attracted a wider audience in its performances on stage at Northeastern University and most recently at the Opera House in Boston. Members of an all-Black professional cast under the musical direction of John Andrew Ross wed their talents with the voices of children as young as five, appearing on stage for the first time.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Orthopedic Surgeon-in-Chief

In 1978 when Dr. Augustus A. White II became Orthopedic Surgeon-in-Chief at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, he became the first African-American to serve as chairman of a clinical department in a major teaching hospital. He is the senior co-author

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Freedom Electronics and Engineering

Now more than 20 years old, Freedom Electronics and Engineering was founded by lawyer and businessman Archie Williams during the height of the civil rights movement in Boston in the 1960s. The firm presently supplies products and services for giant high-tech industries such as Digital Equipment

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Female Anti-Slavery Leader

Susan Paul of Boston, daughter of Rev. Thomas Paul, served as vice president of the Second Annual Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Philadelphia in 1839.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

19th-Century Guitarist

James Gloucester Demarest was a 19th-century musician who taught the guitar and violin in Boston and also composed for these instruments.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneering Teacher of Reading

Wilhelmina Crosson, one of the first African-American teachers in the Boston Public Schools (1923-1949), started her career at the Hancock School in the North End. Working in the Italian-American community with first-generation Italian children, she instituted the first remedial reading program in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population by 1890

In 1820 the Black population of Boston was 1,690; in 1890 it was 8,125.

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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

Action for Boston Community Development, Inc.

Since 1962, Action for Boston Community Development, Inc. ( ABCD) has fostered community development in the city. For over 20 years Robert M. Coard has served as director, one of the longest continuous tenures for a community agency leader in the city of Boston. On the human side of urban

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Childhood Educator

Lucy M. Mitchell became the first African-American elected to the Board of Directors of the Boston YWCA in 1941, where she served for seven years. Previously, in the mid-1930s she pioneered the development of a model nursery school at the Robert Gould Shaw House and led efforts to improve and

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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

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

Barred from Harvard Medical School

Daniel Laing and Isaac H. Snowden of Boston and Martin R. Delany of Pittsburgh, in 1850, were the first blacks admitted into Harvard Medical School. All three were dismissed, however, in 1851, when white students protested their presence; and the Dean of the medical school felt that 'this

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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

Distinguished Player/Coach of Boston Celtics

K.C. Jones was a major figure in Boston's professional basketball history as both a player and a coach. As a guard who made defensive play his hallmark with the Boston Celtics from 1958 to 1967, he had a career total of 2,904 assists and averaged 7.4 points per game. During his tenure as coach of

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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

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

'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

Oldest NAACP Branch

The Boston Branch of the NAACP, the first official and now the oldest branch of the NAACP, developed out of the Boston Committee to Advance the Cause of the Negro, established in 1910. Gathering in 1912 at the Park Street Church, 56 Bostonians (Black and white) received the official Branch charter

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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 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

Professional and Business Men's Club

From its founding in 1946 by Black professional and business men of Boston until its closing in 1987, the Professional and Business Men's Club, also called the P&B, was a unique community institution at 542 Massachusetts Avenue. It was 'a place where you could get know â€˜something' or

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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

Knights of Pythias

The Knights of Pythias was a fraternal and benevolent order in Boston's small and growing Black community in lower Roxbury that provided effective health insurance and death benefits to widows and orphans. Anchored in its own building at the corner of Ruggles and Washington Streets, it helped

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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

Pauline Hopkins, a Black high school student in Boston, won the first prize of 'ten dollars in gold,' offered by the Congregational Publishing Society of Boston in 1895 for her essay on the 'Evils of Intemperance and Their Remedies.' She went on to become a writer for theColored American

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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

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

Museum of Afro-American History

The Museum of Afro-American History was established in Boston in 1964. Its leading founders were Dean Howard Thurman of Boston University and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman. The Museum was established 'to advance knowledge, through historic examination,' about the African-American presence in Boston

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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

18th Century Artist

Early artist Scipio Moorhead (c. 1773-?) is documented primarily in a poem by the slave poet Phillis Wheatley entitled 'To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works.' In a penciled note of the 1773 edition of herPoems on Various Subject, Religious and Moral, she identifies S.M. as ' Scipio

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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