Dimock Community Health Center

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Dimock Community Health Center

Dimock Community Health Center in the Roxbury section of Boston is the oldest health facility in the city oriented to the care of Black and low income people. Founded in 1863 as the New England Hospital for Woman and Children to provide medical training for white women, the hospital also included in its mission the provision of health care for low-income residents. In 1879 Mary Eliza Mahoney became the first African-American nurse in America when she graduated from this institution. Renamed Dimock Community Health Center in 1969, this 127-year-old hospital, presently directed by Jackie Jenkins Scott, is a $7.5 million comprehensive health and human service operation. Though preventive, diagnostic, and treatment programs, Dimock has enhanced the quality of life for ethnic minority residents for more than 20 years. The Center also offers low-cost space to 13 other nonprofit institutions, including centers for day care and job training.

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

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

Benjamin and Sarah Roberts Lawsuit

Benjamin Roberts sued the Boston School Committee in 1849 for denying his daughter Sarah admission to an all-white Boston school. His action rallied school integration forces in the early 1850s, leading to the first official school desegregation in Boston in 1855. At that time the Massachusetts

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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

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

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

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

William E. B. DuBois

William E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was the first African-American to receive the Ph.D. degree from Harvard (1895). His thesis was on the African Slave Trade. DuBois was influenced by Boston's fiery and 'radical' civil rights leader William Monroe Trotter in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity

In another approach to upgrading education for Boston's Black students, the Metropolitan Council for Education Opportunity ( METCO) was founded in 1966, and 219 Boston students began attending school in seven suburban communities (Newton, Brookline, Wellesley, Lexington, Lincoln, Arlington, and

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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

Since 1949 Freedom House in Roxbury, founded by Muriel and Otto Snowden, has worked through bi-racial efforts to reduce barriers to education, employment, and housing opportunities for African-Americans in Boston. Growing from the ' Upper Roxbury Community Project,' started in the

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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

Famous Restaurants

Small lunchrooms and restaurants were plentiful during the early 1900s in Boston's Black neighborhoods. One was the Southern Dining Room operated by Thomas E. Lucas, who advertised his place as 'cool, clean and commodious. . . . . Good food and prompt attentive service have made this a most

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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

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

M.D. Degree for Black Woman

The first African-American female graduate of a medical school was Rebecca Lee, who received an M.D. degree from the New England Female Medical College in Boston in 1864.

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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

Dr. Benjamin Quarles, Historian

Dr. Benjamin Quarles, born in Boston in 1904 and a graduate of English High School, became an eminent 20th-century African-American historian. He is the author ofThe Negro in the Making of America, Black Abolitionists, Lincoln and the Negro, The Negro in the American Revolution, and a definitive

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Patrick School of Pharmacy

Dr. Thomas W. Patrick, pharmacist, founded the Patrick School of Pharmacy in Boston in 1893. Until 1936 he operated the school, where some 5,000 Bostonians, mostly first- and second-generation Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants, were trained to become certified pharmacists.

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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

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

Inventor of Diving Suit

In 1919 Charles H. Jackson, a mechanic in Boston, invented a diving suit used to set a new world's record in 1920 for deep sea diving. John F. Turner, an internationally know diver, reached a depth of 360 feet while diving with Jackson's suit.

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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

Women's Anti-Slavery Organizer

Born in Salem, Sara Remond (1826-1894) was a leading organizer of women for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Protesting segregation in churches, theatres, and other public places, she won a civil court suit after being ejected from the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, which

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Renowned Chemist

Dr. Henry A. Hill (1915-1979) was a distinguished chemist locally and nationally from 1942 until 1979. He was the first African-American to become Chairman of the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society and later became President of the American Chemical Society. In 1961 he

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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 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

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

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

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Leads Rally - Part 2

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

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