First Black Judge

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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 the Justice George Lewis Ruffin Society was established by Black senior-level criminal justice professionals in Massachusetts, led by Judge Julian Houston. The Society, hosted by Northeastern University, encouraged greater understanding between the Black community and criminal justice professionals. A portrait of Judge Ruffin was unveiled at Charlestown District Court in February 1990.

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

Leader in Government and Education

Paul Parks served as Director of Model Cities under Boston Mayor Kevin White, first Massachusetts Secretary of Education under Governor Frank Sargent, a member of the Board of Appeals in Boston, and president of the Board of Trustees, Boston Public Library.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneering Public Servant

Clarence Richard Elam (1923-1985) performed as a pioneering public servant as Assistant Director of Civil Defense for the City of Boston form 1950-52, Executive Secretary of the Governor's Council (1952-56), Chairman of the Boston Licensing Board (1956-74), and Special Assistant to Attorney General

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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

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

55th Massachusetts Regiment

The 55th Massachusetts Regiment commanded by Colonel Hallowell of Boston acquitted itself valiantly during many Civil War battles, particularly in the battle of Honey Hill in South Carolina, where its determined resistance to advancing southern forces saved the lives of numerous Federal troops. In

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Plymouth Hospital - 1st Picture

Plymouth Hospital and Nurses' Training School, founded and operated by Dr. Cornelius Garland, a Black doctor, from 1908 to 1928, contributed to the health care needs of Blacks and to Black community development during the first quarter of the 1900s. The hospital building still stands on East

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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

Africans in Boston Before 1638?

In 1638, eight years after the original settlement of Boston, a ship named Desire arrived in Boston with the first American slaves. Built in Marblehead, the merchant vessel brought its cargo of cotton, tobacco, and slaves from Providence Island in the Bahamas. There is reason to believe that Black

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Elected Black Woman

In 1952 Madeline D. Andrews was elected to the Medford School Committee. She was apparently the first Black woman elected to public office in Massachusetts.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Two All-Black Fighting Units

There were two all-Black units, the Massasoit Guards and the Liberty Guards in Boston in the 1850s, but they were not attached to the militia of the State because there was opposition 'to there being any Colored men belonging to the State Militia.' Many of these men eventually joined the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Catholic Bishop

Bishop James A. Healy, born of mixed parentage on a Georgia plantation, served as a priest in Boston's Irish immigrant neighborhoods in the 1850s. He was named Chancellor of the Boston Archdiocese in 1855 and Bishop of the Portland (Maine) Diocese in 1875.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

'Mother of the Year'

In 1952 Madeline Kountze Dugger Kelly of Medford became the first Black woman to be named Massachusetts Mother of the Year.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Secretary of Transportation

Real estate entrepreneur Richard Taylor was appointed in 1988 to the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; and in 1990 he became Deputy Chairman, both first appointments for an African-American in Boston. The Federal Reserve is 'the banker's bank,' controlling the money supply

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

WILD Radio has been on the air since 1953 and in 1972 became the only urban contemporary radio station owned and operated by African-Americans, the Sheridan Broadcasting Company. In 1980, African-American media entrepreneur Kendall Nash purchased the station from Sheridan and has been its owner and

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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

Crispus Attucks

Crispus Attucks, an ex-slave from Framingham was the first to die in the Boston Massacre (1770), which some historians mark as the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Attucks led a small group of colonists to a British garrison on King Street in Boston. One of the British soldiers panicked

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African Society for Mutual Aid and Charity

In 1796 a group of Boston Blacks founded the African Society for Mutual Aid and Charity. The Society provided social-welfare services, financial relief, and job placement to its members and their families.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Prime Time First

In 1982, Liz Walker became the first African-American in Boston's TV history to anchor a prime time weekly newscast. She co-hosts the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts on WBZ-TV (Channel 4).

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Women's Bar Association President

In March 1990 Judith Dilday became the first African-American president of the prestigious Women's Bar Association. Just the year before she had helped establish the first Black female law firm in New England, Burnham, Hines and Dilday.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Slave Introduces Smallpox Vaccination

The ravages of smallpox were lessened in the 1700s because Onesimus, a slave to Cotton Mather in Boston, introduced an African vaccination practice that had made his body immune to the smallpox virus. Dr. Zabdiel Boylston of Boston inoculated some 240 people, following Onesimus's description of

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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

First Black Psychiatrist

Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller (1872-1953), acknowledged as the first Black to practice psychiatry in America, graduated from Boston University's Medical School in 1897 and practiced psychiatry in Boston and Framingham until 1937.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Gretchen Jackson was the first African-American woman to have a sponsored and sustained daytime radio program in Boston from 1953 to 1961. As a disc jockey and talk-show interviewer, she was heard first on WBOS and later on WBMS.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Federal Judge

David S. Nelson became the first Black federal judge in Massachusetts in 1979.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Female Dentist

Dr. Jessie G. Garnett (1897-1976) was the first Black woman dentist in Boston. A 1919 graduate of Tufts Dental School and the first Black woman to graduate from Tufts Dental, she practiced for 50 years until 1970. Dr. Garnett once recalled, 'When I first started, patients came to the office and saw

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Labor unions for Blacks in Boston came into existence in the late 1800s with the establishment of the Boston Colored Waiter's Alliance or Local 183 of the American Federation of Labor. Members were so-called public waiters not regularly employed, but hired for catering and temporary hotel and

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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

Scene of 'Boston Riot'

In 1988 Columbus Avenue A.M.E. Zion Church celebrated its 150th anniversary. Moving to its present site on Columbus Avenue in 1903, it was the scene of the famous 'Boston Riot' in July, 1903, when Boston's militant equal rights leader William Monroe Trotter and Booker T. Washington, the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Newspaper/Radio/TV Pioneer

In 1954 George Forsyth became the first African-American reporter to be hired by theBoston Traveler, the afternoon paper owned by theBoston Herald. Beginning as a street reporter, he became a feature writer and drama and entertainment critic. In 1968 he joined the staff of WHDH-TV as an on-air

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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