First Black Pharmacist

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First Black Pharmacist

Robert H. Carter of New Bedford (and great-grandfather of author/historian Robert C. Hayden) was the first Black to practice pharmacy in Massachusetts, receiving his certification from the Commonwealth in 1886. He owned two drugstores in Boston between 1895 and 1905.

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

Henry Owens Movers

Henry Owens Movers was founded in 1927 in Cambridge, becoming one of the major moving and rigging companies in New England still in business today. Henry Owens, Sr., founded his business with a horse and buggy, peddling ice to his neighbors and carting baggage to and from Boston's piers for the

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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

Melnea Cass (1896-1978), who fought vigorously and successfully for the improvement of services and resources for Boston's Black community for over 60 years, had a new thoroughfare named in her honor in 1981, Melnea Cass Boulevard in the lower Roxbury neighborhood of Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

NAACP Youth Council

Organized with 58 members from 25 different community youth groups and churches in 1936, the Boston Youth Council of NAACP held a mass meeting a year later protesting educational inequality in the Boston schools.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

William Stanley Brathwaite (1878-1962) of Boston was a significant force in the development of creative American literature from 1906 to 1936. He was a poet, journalist, essayist, and pioneering anthologist of American poetry, writing some 31 books of poetry and prose. In 1918 he received the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

School Desegregation Suit

In 1972 a suit was filed by the Boston Branch NAACP against the Boston School Committee for maintaining a segregated school district and low quality education for its mostly Black student population. When Federal Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr., ordered a school desegregation plan in Boston in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Wig Manufacturer

The largest wig manufacturer in Boston in the early 1900s was Gilbert C. Harris. By 1910 his mail-order business was the largest of its kind in New England, supplying theatrical stock companies throughout the country.

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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

Roland Hayes, Vocal Artist

Roland Hayes, who gained national and international fame as a classical concert artist, launched his career in Boston's Symphony Hall in 1917. He lived, studied, and worked in Boston and Brookline, Massachusetts, from 1912 until his death in 1977. In 1921 the noted tenor gave a command performance

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Bay State Golf Association

The Bay State Golf Association was founded in 1938 by Black golfers from Medford and Boston. In these early years they played at Sagamore Springs in Lynnfield, one of the few golf courses open to Blacks. Bay State's first annual tournament was held in 1940 at Ponkapoag Golf Club in Canton. This

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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

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

In the 1940s and 1950s, at the corner of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues, stood a landmark in the history of jazz, the Hi-Hat Club. (The new Harriet Tubman House now occupies the site). Originally it was a supper club patronized by whites listening to 'white' music, but the music became

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Internationally Recognized Sculptor

Meta Warwick Fuller, who lived in Framingham, Massachusetts, from 1909 until her death in 1968, was widely acclaimed for her sculpture. Her sculptures of human figures were exhibited both locally and nationally.

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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

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

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

Housing Discrimination Victories

In 1989 the Boston branch of the NAACP won two major lawsuits for housing discrimination . Both cases were unique because they were the 'first of their kind' in the country to award individuals monetary compensation, according to Attorney Dianne Wilkerson, the NAACP Housing Committee

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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

Renowned Artist

In the mid-19th century Edward M. Bannister became one of the earliest Black artists in Boston to win widespread praise for his work. His crayon portraits were noted for their excellence. He later moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he became the principal founder of the Providence Art Club.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black School Principal

Maria L. Baldwin of Cambridge became the first Black school principal in Massachusetts when she was appointed to head the Agassiz School in Cambridge in 1899. She remained in the position until 1922.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Deputy Tax Collector

Stewart E. Hoyt, who started as a clerk in the Boston tax collector's office, rose to the position of Deputy Tax Collector for the City in the 1920s, retiring in 1931.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Muriel Snowden International High School

While Muriel Snowden (1916-1988) was still alive, the Boston School Committee renamed Copley Square High School, the Muriel Snowden International High School, in recognition of Mrs. Snowden's efforts to foster the study of other cultures and foreign languages among urban youth and for co-founding

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Commissioners of Public Health

The first African-American to hold the position of Commissioner of Public Health in Massachusetts was Dr. Bailus Walker, appointed in 1984. He was followed by another African-American, Dr. Deborah Prothow-Smith, Commissioner from 1987 to 1989, the first woman to hold this position.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Memories of Great Black Athletes

Fifty Sports Years Along Memory Lane: Afro-American Sports History - Hometown, Local and National by Mabray 'Doc' Kountze of West Medford was published in 1981. Kountze's book chronicles hundreds of sports figures, teams and events in greater Boston's African-American history.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Nationally Known Dancer

Stanley E. Brown (1902-1977) was a nationally known dancer and dance instructor in Boston from 1929 to 1977. Founder of the Stanley Brown Dance Studio, he trained and coached hundreds of professionals. 'Sugar Ray' Robinson took tap lessons from Brown as did Cab Calloway, Diana Ross, and Lola

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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

Black Population in 1970

In 1970, 51 percent of Boston's African-Americans had been born outside of Massachusetts and had migrated to the state, and most of the newcomers (29 percent of the entire Black population) were of southern origin.

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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

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