First Black Printing Business

BlackFacts Details

First Black Printing Business

In 1838 Benjamin Roberts established Boston's first Black-owned and operated printing business.

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneering Playwright

James Henderson (1894-1979) was a pioneering actor and developer of the Black theater in Boston during the first half of the 20th century. As a playwright, he toured New England with his Black theater groups.

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Owner of Pro Team

Peter C. B. Bynoe, a native of Boston, and Bertram Lee, a Boston businessman, became the first African-Americans to own a major professional sports franchise when they purchased the Denver Nuggets of the National Basketball Association in 1989.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

20 Years or More in Journalism

An impressive roster of journalists have 'made news' on the Boston scene for more than 20 years. Among them: Robert (Bob) Jordan, columnist and editorial writer with the Boston Globe and the first African-American elected to head theGlobe's 1,200 member employees' union in 1989; Sarah Ann Shaw and

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Businesses in 1846

Nearly 200 of Boston's 800 black residents operated businesses in 1846.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Legendary Community Politicians

From the mid-1920s through the 1950s, brothers Silas F. and Balcom S. Taylor, Registered Pharmacists, championed voter registration, jobs, housing, and political participation for Blacks in Boston, when there were no elected Black officials in city or state government. Their drugstore on Tremont

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Renowned Voice and Piano Teacher

For over 60 years Rebecca Ellastine Lee Broadnax (1893-1987) was a renowned voice and piano teacher in greater Boston. For teenagers she founded the Cantemus Club in 1934, a group of 24 students who presented concerts and recitals in Boston and throughout New England until 1952. She organized the

fave

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.

fave

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.

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population 1880-1920

The Boston Black population numbered 2,348 in 1865. By 1880 (after the Civil War), it had climbed to 5,873. Throughout the entire period from the Civil War to World War I, Boston had as large a proportion of African-American residents as New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland; the Black

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Grimes Oil Company

Calvin M. Grimes, Sr., founded Grimes Oil Company in Boston in 1940. Now operated by Calvin M. Grimes, Jr., this 50-year-old business started with one delivery truck, once serviced more than 3,000 residential customers, and now delivers gasoline, fuel oil, diesel fuel, and residual oil to

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Female Journalist

Lillian Lewis was the first African-American woman journalist in Boston. In the 1880s, she wrote for The Advocate, a Black community newspaper. She then went toThe Boston Herald, writing under the name of Bert Islew, scrambling the letters of her last name to disguise the fact that she was

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Published Novelist

William Wells Brown, a novelist, playwright, historian, essayist, lecturer, physician, and abolitionist, spent most of his life and published most of his work in Boston. He is especially noted forClotel: or The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first

fave

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

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Charles Street A.M.E. Church

In 1983, Charles Street A.M.E. Church celebrated its 150th anniversary. Founded in 1833 by Boston's 19th-century Black community on Beacon Hill, it moved to its present site in upper Roxbury in 1939, the last Black church to move out of the Beacon Hill area.

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

All-American Football Star

William H. Lewis, an All-American football star at Harvard, is credited with inventing the 'roving center' defense strategy. He went on to a distinguished legal and political career in Boston.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Preacher at Tremont Temple

Rev. John Sella Martin, who served as pastor of the Joy Street Baptist Church ( African Meeting House) around 1859, often served as guest preacher at the Tremont Temple, a mostly white congregation. He addressed worshippers at the Temple on January 1, 1863, when news of

fave

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

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Inventor of Light Bulb Filament

Lewis Latimer (1848-1928), born the son of a fugitive slave ( George Latimer) in Boston, became a significant inventor with his development of an improved process for manufacturing the electric light bulb filament. He received a U.S. patent for his filament and became a member of Thomas

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Talk Show Host

Janet Langhart was the first African-American woman to host a daytime TV talk and variety show in Boston. Between 1973 and 1978 she co-hosted the Good Morning Show, later named the Good Day Show, with Jack Willis on WCVB-TV, Channel 5.

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Eureka Co-Operative Bank

David E. Crawford opened Eureka Co-Operative Bank in Boston in 1910, 'the only bank in the East owned and operated by â€˜Colored People.'' He was appointed a master in the Chancery by the Governor of Massachusetts in 1915, and in 1916 the citizens of Boston elected him as a delegate to the National

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Prosperous Hat Maker

Stephen Jackson was a prosperous hat maker in Boston in the 1730s, when 'a man would as soon go without his head as go without a hat.'

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Career Officer

Colonel Frank M. Snowden (1885-1947) of Boston joined the U.S. Army in 1907 and rose through the ranks, in an era when few Blacks became officers, to become a colonel. After leaving the service in 1945 he served as civilian executive of the First Service Command (U.S. Army) in Boston.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Lifestyle Facts

Blackfacts BETA RELEASE 11.5.3
(Production Environment)