Distinguished Athletes

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Distinguished Athletes

Matthew Bullock, a graduate of Everett High, and John Shelburne, a Boston English graduate, both became All-American football players at Dartmouth College in the early 20th century. Bullock later returned to coach at Everett High, becoming the first African-American to serve as a head coach of a major northern white high school sports team. Shelburne became Youth Director and Executive Director of its breezy Meadows Camp in Holliston. Today in Roxbury the Shelburne Recreational Center is named in his honor.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Celtics Star

Chuck Cooper was the first Black player on the Boston Celtics basketball team, appearing with them in the 1940s.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Heritage Trail

The Black Heritage Trail on Beacon Hill in Boston is a walking tour which explores the history of the city's 19th-century African-American community. The tour was started in 1963 as an informal walking tour of some 10 sites by J. Marcus Mitchell, the first curator of the Museum of Negro History

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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

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

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

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

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

Urban League of Boston

The Urban League of Boston was established in May 1919 and has been dedicated to the economic and social development of Boston's African-American people and neighborhoods for 70 years. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s especially, the Boston affiliate of the National Urban League was a significant

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First City Appointment

The first appointment of an African-American to a city position in Boston appears to have been that of W. W. Bryant, who in 1885 was made deputy sealer of weights and measures.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Nurses Admitted to City Hospital

Led by two Black doctors, W.O. Taylor and William Worthy, a committee of Black Bostonians that includedGuardian editor William Monroe Trotter successfully championed the cause of two Black high school graduates seeking admission to the nurses' training program at Boston's City Hospital in

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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

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

Early Black Newspapers

The Afro-American Pressand Its Editors, the Boston Co-Operator, The Boston Leader, The Advocate, the Courant, and The Boston Observer were early Black newspapers in Boston during the 1880s and 1890s.

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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

Boston Guardian

The Boston Guardian newspaper, a major 20th-century civil rights publication, was founded in Boston in 1901 by William Monroe Trotter, who published the newspaper until his death in 1934. For the next 23 years (1934 - 1957), Trotter's sister, Maude Trotter Steward, and her husband, Dr. Charles

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Robert Gould Shaw House

From 1907 to the early 1970s the Robert Gould Shaw House served as a major social agency for Black people in Boston.

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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

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

Bay State Banner

The Bay State Banner, Boston's African-American newspaper founded in 1965 and published by Melvin Miller, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1990.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First U.S. Senator since Reconstruction

In 1962 Edward W. Brooke, a Boston attorney, became the first African-American to be elected Attorney General for the Commonwealth. Two year later, in 1964, he became the first African-American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.

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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

Breezy Meadows Camp

On May 1, 1936 the Robert Gould Shaw House bought Breezy Meadows Camp in Holliston, Massachusetts, which provided summer camping for Boston's Black children and youth until the mid 1960s.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneer Activist Doctor

Dr. Louis T. Wright (1891-1952), a Harvard Medical School graduate in 1915 and a leading 20th century Black physician, pioneered in the struggle of adequate health care and medical facilities until his death in 1952. His first struggle was in Boston when he was denied the opportunity to attend

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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

'Finest Boxer to Wear Gloves'

Sam Langford of Boston and Cambridge had by his own count 650 boxing bouts between 1902 and 1926; 250 of his fights were officially recorded. Standing just 5 feet 7 inches, and weighing 165 pounds - the size of a middleweight - Langford fought as a heavyweight and held the so-called Negro and

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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

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

Top Position for 'Colored Man'

Attorney E. E. Brown was appointed Assistant Health Commisioner for the city of Boston in 1907 by Mayor Fitzgerald, a Democrat. The Guardian newspaper called Brown's appointment the 'best position any colored man ever had in Boston.' The newspaper went on to say, 'The appointment of a colored man

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Downtown Clerks

In the Christmas season of 1945, shoppers at Gilchrist's brought their gifts for wrapping to a young female employee who stood out among the holiday help. Cynthia Belgrave was the first Black clerk ever hired in a downtown department store in Boston. This hiring came from pressure exercised by

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Outstanding Criminal Lawyer

William H. Lewis (1869-1949), long recognized as one of Boston's outstanding criminal lawyers, was the first African-American to hold the position of Assistant United States Attorney General, appointed by President Taft in 1911.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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