Builder of the Twelfth Baptist Church

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Builder of the Twelfth Baptist Church

Rev. Leonard Grimes, who became the minister of Twelfth Baptist Church in 1848, led this historic church through the turbulent years of anti-slavery (1850-1865), serving the church until his death in 1873. Established in 1840, Twelfth Baptist is 150 years old.

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

Chairman of National Democratic Party

Ronald H. Brown, who spent his early childhood in Roxbury and attended the David A. Ellis School, became Chairman of the National Democratic Party in 1989, a historic first for an African-American.

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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

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

Pharmacist Doctor Jackson

For 50 years, from 1938-1988, Clarence Noel Jackson (1911-1988), Reg. Ph., owned and operated the Douglass Square Pharmacy in lower Roxbury. 'Dr. Jackson,' as he was called, a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy in 1937, provided a community institution for health care throughout

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Anti-Slavery Treatise

'The Selling of Joseph,' a sermon by white clergyman Samuel Sewall, first published in Boston in 1700, became the first public anti-slavery treatise. Liberty, he wrote, being 'The real value unto life; none ought to part with it themselves or deprive others of it but upon mature

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

David Walker's Appeal

With his publication ofAppeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, urging slaves to fight for their freedom, David Walker created an influential piece of anti-slavery literature that helped shape the posture of Black militancy of the 1830s and beyond.

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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

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass gave his first anti-slavery speech on Nantucket Island in August 1841, a speech which propelled him into the anti-slavery cause. He soon found his way to Boston where he became a leader of the movement.

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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

Eyes on the Prize

Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years 1954 - 1965, a television mini-series produced by Henry Hampton, President of Blackside, Inc., a film production company in Boston, was seen by over 20 million national viewers in 1987. This story of the modern civil rights movement won several

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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

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

First African-American Superintendent

In 1985 Dr. Laval S. Wilson became the first African-American to hold the position of Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools in the history of the 354-year-old school system. He served as superintendent for five years, one of the longest tenures for an urban school superintendent.

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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

Underground Railroad Leader

Lewis Hayden, a leading 19th-century Black abolitionist who harbored over two-thirds of Boston's fugitive slaves in his Beacon Hill house prior to the Civil War, was elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1873.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

20th-Century Statesman

Herbert L. Jackson became one of the most successful Black politicians in the history of Massachusetts, serving some 30 years in public office from the 1940s to the 1970s. He was first elected in 1945 to a seat on the Malden City Council, where he served until 1950, when he won his first of two

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Medical Breakthrough

Dr. William A. Hinton (1883-1959) directed the Wasserman Laboratory of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at Harvard Medical School from 1915 to 1949 and developed the famous Hinton test for syphilis, which was used to diagnose this venereal disease for over 40 years.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Roxbury Action Program

The Roxbury Action Program (RAP), led by George Morrison and Lloyd King, was established in 1969 in the Highland Park section of Roxbury to renew a severely blighted neighborhood. During the past 20 years RAP has rehabilitated 260 units of housing for nearly 800 people and brought major physical

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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

Civil War Caterer and Senator

For more than 25 years Joshua B. Smith (1813-1879) operated a thriving catering business for private individuals and abolitionist organizations as well as for the troops during the Civil War. He represented Cambridge as a Senator in the state legislature during 1873 and 1874.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Newspaper Professional

Dexter D. Eure, Sr., completed 25 years of service atThe Boston Globe in 1989. He had started as an assistant to the manager of circulation in 1963 and five years later became an assistant to the editor for urban affairs. For two years he was the only Black American in Boston with a weekly

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Celebrant at Holy Cross Cathedral

Rev. John H. Dorsey, the second African-American priest in the American Catholic Church, celebrated Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston's South End on August 17, 1902. The Pilot said of his stay in Boston: 'This young priest's visit to Boston has benefitted all classes.' The Guardian

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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

Theological School President

Rev. David T. Shannon became the first African-American to head the 184-year old Andover Newton Theological School in Newton in 1991. This school is the nation's oldest Protestant graduate school of theology.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Rev. Michael E. Haynes

Rev. Michael E. Haynes, installed as Senior Pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church on October 24, 1965, on the 125th anniversary of the historic church, has served in that capacity for 25 years. In addition to his ministry, he served 17 years on the state Parole Board and in the 1970s, as a state

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Neighborhoods 1920-1960

For the first half of the 20th century the entire South End and lower Roxbury community became the traditional and historic Black section of Boston. Until 1950 most Blacks resided in narrow geographic strip bounded by Columbus Avenue and Washington Street and Dartmouth Street and what is now New

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Charles Street A.M.E. Church

In 1983, Charles Street A.M.E. Church celebrated its 150th anniversary. Founded in 1833 by Boston's 19th-century Black community on Beacon Hill, it moved to its present site in upper Roxbury in 1939, the last Black church to move out of the Beacon Hill area.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston born and raised, Jimmy Slyde has gained national and international fame as a tap dancer in films and concerts. Studying dance with Stanley Brown and Mildred Davenport in Boston, he started his early career in the city's vaudeville, theaters, and nightclubs - the RKO, the Old Howard, and the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Temperance Society

In the early 1830s Jane Putnam and Susan Paul formed a temperance society. In 1833 the group was responsible for 114 African-Americans taking the 'cold water pledge' denouncing liquor. Two years later in 1835 the New England Temperance Society of People of Color was formed.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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