First Court Child Care Center

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First Court Child Care Center

The Roxbury District Court Child Care Center was the first court-affiliated drop-in care center in New England for families who must bring their children with them when they have court business. Roxbury District Court Judge Julian T. Houston, now a Superior Court judge, worked for four years to bring his idea of such a center to fruition in May 1989. Parents with court business and no child care arrangements or with children waiting to appear in court proceedings can use the center free of charge. Initial funding for the center start-up and space renovation came from public and private sources, including Bank of Boston. Associated Day Care Services of Metropolitan Boston developed and now operates the center, located in the Dudley Branch Library, with Massachusetts Department of Social Services and United Way funds.

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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Longest Tenure for a Black Minister

In 1980, Rev. Richard M. Owens completed 43 years of pastoring the historic Peoples Baptist Church, giving him the longest tenure for a Black minister in Boston's history. He was the first Black elected President of the American Baptist Convention of Massachusetts in 1969.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Women's Anti-Slavery Organizer

Born in Salem, Sara Remond (1826-1894) was a leading organizer of women for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Protesting segregation in churches, theatres, and other public places, she won a civil court suit after being ejected from the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, which

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. John B. Hall, Jr.

Dr. John B. Hall, Jr., became the first Black doctor accepted as an intern at Boston City Hospital in 1931.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

19th-Century Sculptor

Edmonia Lewis (1845-1890) was America's first Black artist recognized for her reliefs and busts of great anti-slavery leaders and forForever Free, a composition of marble (completed in 1867) showing a man and woman overcome with emotion on hearing news of the emancipation from slavery. Lewis began

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity

In another approach to upgrading education for Boston's Black students, the Metropolitan Council for Education Opportunity ( METCO) was founded in 1966, and 219 Boston students began attending school in seven suburban communities (Newton, Brookline, Wellesley, Lexington, Lincoln, Arlington, and

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Teacher

The first Black teacher in the Boston Public Schools is believed to have been Harriet L. Smith, who taught from 1890 (at the Sharp School on Beacon Hill) to 1917 (at the Bowdoin School on Beacon Hill). Her sister, Elizabeth N. Smith, taught from 1894-1896. Other Black teachers during early 1900s

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

William E. B. DuBois

William E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was the first African-American to receive the Ph.D. degree from Harvard (1895). His thesis was on the African Slave Trade. DuBois was influenced by Boston's fiery and 'radical' civil rights leader William Monroe Trotter in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Racial Imbalance in Schools

In July 1964 an advisory committee to the State Board of Education, chaired by Dr. Owen B. Kiernan, reported that segregation existed in 78 percent of the schools in Massachusetts and that racial imbalance was detrimental to sound education in six specific ways, including 'serious conflict with the

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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

Greatest Cyclist

Marshall W. 'Major' Taylor of Worcester, Massachusetts, was the greatest cyclist in the country in the 1890s and early 1900s. He was World Professional Bicycle Champion between 1908 and 1910.

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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

World War I Lieutenants

When the 17th Provisional Training Regiment at Des Moines, Iowa, graduated 278 Blacks as Army lieutenants at the beginning of World War I, eleven of the graduates were from Massachusetts and two of them, Oliver Lewis and Edward Dugger, were African-American from Roxbury. Edward Dugger helped to

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Theodore Drury, who had earlier produced operas with Black casts in New York City, organized and trained a Black company in Boston in the early years of the 20th century. In 1907 'Aida' and a scene from 'Carmen' were produced, and 'Faust' and 'Cavalleria Rusticana' in the following year.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Histrionic Club

The Histrionic Club, the first Black drama group in Boston, was founded in the late 1840s. Many of the plays it produced were written by William C. Nell.

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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

Leading Theologian

Dr. Howard Thurman, appointed Dean of the Chapel at Boston University, became the first African-American in the country to serve as an administrative dean and spiritual leader at a predominantly white university. He served in this position from 1955 to 1965. A distinguished preacher and religious

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

National Federation of Afro-American Women

The National Federation of Afro-American Women was founded at Boston's Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1895. The following year it united with the Washington National League to form the National Association of Colored Women.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Museum of Afro-American History

The Museum of Afro-American History was established in Boston in 1964. Its leading founders were Dean Howard Thurman of Boston University and his wife Sue Bailey Thurman. The Museum was established 'to advance knowledge, through historic examination,' about the African-American presence in Boston

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Aswalos House, a satellite of Boston's YWCA at the corner of Maple and Seaver Streets in upper Roxbury, was opened in the Black community in 1968 and has continuously provided educational, social, and recreational services for young girls and women for over 20 years.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

William Monroe Trotter's Equal Rights League

In 1901 William Monroe Trotter (1873-1934) founded the Boston Equal Rights League to push for civil and human rights for Black people. The league operated nine years before the establishment of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

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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

Microwave Associates

Microwave Associates, Inc. (now called M/A-COM) was founded in 1950 in Boston by two African-American engineers, Louis W. Roberts and Richard M. Walker, and Vess Chigas (a Greek American). In 1956 the company offered public stock and many of Boston's African-Americans invested. Microwave Associates

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

The Fight for School Equality

In 1787 Primus Hall and other Black leaders petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for equal school facilities for Black children.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Renowned Chemist

Dr. Henry A. Hill (1915-1979) was a distinguished chemist locally and nationally from 1942 until 1979. He was the first African-American to become Chairman of the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society and later became President of the American Chemical Society. In 1961 he

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Benjamin and Sarah Roberts Lawsuit

Benjamin Roberts sued the Boston School Committee in 1849 for denying his daughter Sarah admission to an all-white Boston school. His action rallied school integration forces in the early 1850s, leading to the first official school desegregation in Boston in 1855. At that time the Massachusetts

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Female Law Firm

Attorneys Margaret Burnham, Geraldine Hines, and Judith Dilday established the first Black female law firm in New England in 1989. Located in Boston, Burnham, Hines and Dilday specialize in family law, divorce, wills, custody, and civil and criminal litigation.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Landowner

Bostian Ken of Dorchester was perhaps the first Black landowner in Massachusetts. In 1656 he owned a house and lot in Dorchester, as well as more than 'four acres of land planted in wheat.'

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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