Eyes on the Prize

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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 prestigious awards, among them, 'Program of the Year' - TV Critics Association; Best Documentary by TV Guide; Best of Festival by American Film and Video Festival; Broadcast Journalism's Most Prestigious Award; the Dupont-Columbia Gold Baton Award; and an Emmy from the National Academy of TV Arts and Sciences. In 1990, after two more years of archival film research and oral history, a second TV series,Eyes on the Prize II - America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985, made its debut on Nation Public Television.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

United Daughters of Zion

The United Daughters of Zion, organized November 6, 1845, was the first women's beneficial group - Black or white - in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Church

In December 1806, Rev. Thomas Paul (who had been and 'exhorter' of scripture passages since age sixteen) formally organized and became the first minister of the first Black church in Boston at the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Charles Lenox Remond

Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1873) was perhaps the boldest agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and possibly the most eloquent of the Black abolitionists of antebellum Boston. He had a national and international reputation as an anti-slavery leader, and was appointed as an American

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Harvard Phi Beta Kappa

In 1895 Boston's William Monroe Trotter became the first Black to receive a Phi Beta Kappa key from Harvard University.

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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

First Abolitionist Group

When a group of Black Bostonians founded the Massachusetts General Colored Association in 1826 to fight for an end to slavery, they became Boston's primary abolition organization.

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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

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

Pioneering Black Historian

William C. Nell of Boston, an early writer-reporter for the Liberator, was also a pioneering Black historian, havingwritten Services of the Colored Americans in the Wars 1776 and 1812 (1852) andThe Colored Patriots of the American Revolution with Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons to

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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

The historic Pioneer Club, a semi-private club owned by Shag and Bal Taylor and a landmark in the history of jazz, was a funky after-hours night spot located in a brick, three-story row house at the end of a short alley off Tremont Street (where the new Douglass Plaza now stands). Socially and

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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

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

First Black Public School

In 1808 the first 'public' school for Boston's African-American children was opened in the basement of the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill. Prince Saunders, and African-American teacher at the African Meeting House school, persuaded white businessman Abiel Smith to donate securities in his

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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

Home for Aged Colored Women

For 84 years (1860-1944), the Home for Aged Colored Women on Beacon Hill provided a residence and social services for hundreds of Boston's African-American female elderly, many of them ex-slaves who had worked in Boston as domestics after the Civil War. The Rev. Leonard Grimes, minister of Twelfth

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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

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

Cyrus Foster, 'griot' of Boston

Cyrus Foster was the 'griot' (storyteller) of Boston in the 19th century, known for his tales of New England Blacks during the Revolutionary War and early period of America's nationhood. A Revolutionary War veteran, Foster spent much of his time walking the streets and talking about his

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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

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

In 1983 Mel King changed Boston's political history when he became the first Black mayoral candidate in the city's history to win a preliminary election and run in the general election for control of Boston City Hall. While defeated in the runoff by Ray Flynn, he gathered 30 percent of the general

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

League of Women for Community Service

The League of Women for Community Service was founded in 1918 as a 'comfort home' for World War I Black soldiers in Boston. Still operating today at 558 Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, this Black women's group has consistently provided charitable, cultural, and educational services. For more than

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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

Inventor of Bread Crumb Machine

Joseph Lee of Boston received a U.S. patent in 1895 for a machine that made bread crumbs for the food industry. Several years later he received a second patent for the first machine to make bread dough.

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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

Founder of Equal Rights Newspaper

J. Gordon Street was a journalist for three of Boston's white newspapers in the 1880s: theBoston Beacon, theBoston Evening Record, andThe Boston Herald. Critical of the white American press' neglect of discrimination faced by Blacks in the late 19th century, he established a Black newspaper, The

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Minutemen

Peter Salem of Framingham, Job Potomea and Isaiah Barjonah of Stoneham, Cuff Whitemore of Cambridge, Prince of Brookline, and Pompey of Braintree were among the Blacks in greater Boston who joined the Minutemen before the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775. Salem is remembered for fatally shooting

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Media and Political Strategist

In 1986 the Boston Globe called media and political strategist Joyce Ferriabough, the only woman to break into the campaign managers' circle when she guided Charles Yancey's historic run for State Auditor. Regularly quoted in the news media for her views on political trends, especially as they

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Black Neighborhood

Between 1800 and 1900 most of Boston's African American residents lived in the West End, between Pinckney and Cambridge Streets and between Joy and Charles Streets - a neighborhood now called the north slope of Beacon Hill.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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