First Talk Show Host

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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.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Female President of NAACP Branch

In 1948, when Florence LeSuerer was elected president of Boston's branch of the NAACP, she became the first woman in the country to head a local NAACP chapter. She served as branch president from 1948 to 1951.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Congressional Medal of Honor Winner

Sergeant William Carney of New Bedford, a member of the famed 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War, was the first African-American awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at the battle of Fort Wagner in July 1863. The U.S. flag he saved during the battle still hangs in the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston's Underground Railroad

In the decades prior to the Civil War, Blacks in Boston were prominent in developing and operating one of the principal stations of the 'Underground Railroad' that helped escaped slaves from the South find refuge in the North or in Canada. From his home at 66 Phillips Street on Beacon Hill (now

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Bolling Family: Political Phenomenon

The Bolling family represented a phenomenon unprecedented in Boston politics in the early 1980s, when three members held elective office at the same time - Royal Bolling, Sr., served as state senator, while his son Royal Bolling, Jr., served as state representative, and his son Bruce Bolling served

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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

Firefighters Association

The Vulcans, Boston's African-American firefighters' association, was formed in 1972. At that time there had been only 17 Black and Hispanic firemen in the history of the city's fire department. When the Vulcans filed a court suit against the city of Boston for discrimination in hiring

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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

Three Firsts for Black Physician

Dr. Kenneth C. Edelin was the first African-American physician to direct a major clinical department at Boston City Hospital when he was named Director of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1978, a position he held until 1989. Also, as Chairman and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Boston

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

MacArthur Fellows

Five African-Americans of Boston have received the prestigious MacArthur Fellows award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago: Elma Lewis (1981) for Arts Education; Robert Moses (1982) Philosophy and Education; Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (1984) Sociology of Education; Muriel

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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

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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

Barred from Harvard Medical School

Daniel Laing and Isaac H. Snowden of Boston and Martin R. Delany of Pittsburgh, in 1850, were the first blacks admitted into Harvard Medical School. All three were dismissed, however, in 1851, when white students protested their presence; and the Dean of the medical school felt that 'this

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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

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

A group of Black women led by Wilhelmina Crosson started the Aristo Club in 1924 to teach African-American history in the Boston schools and Black community and to boost educational and cultural opportunities for Boston's Black youth. In 1926 the Club sponsored the first official Negro History Week

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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

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

Oldest Suburban Churches

Myrtle Baptist Church in Newton, founded in 1874, and St. John's Baptist Church in Woburn, founded in 1886, are the oldest Black churches in suburban Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston Guardian

The Boston Guardian newspaper, a major 20th-century civil rights publication, was founded in Boston in 1901 by William Monroe Trotter, who published the newspaper until his death in 1934. For the next 23 years (1934 - 1957), Trotter's sister, Maude Trotter Steward, and her husband, Dr. Charles

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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

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

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

Oldest Funeral Home

The J. B. Johnson Funeral Home, established in 1932, and the Davis Funeral Home, established in 1935 - both still in business - are two of the oldest continuously performing establishments providing services to Black families in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

TV Executive First

When Donna Latson Gittens was named vice president of community programming for WCVB-TV in 1983, she became the first African-American in the history of local television to assume this executive position and one of a relatively few in the nation.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Noted Immigration Lawyer

Attorney John W. Schenck (1869-1962), admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1914, was appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston in 1920 and held that position until 1933. During that time he handled most of the immigration cases in the Commonwealth.

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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

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

Church in Faneuil Hall

While Black people in Boston attended white churches after the American Revolution, increasing incidents of racial discrimination moved them to request the use of Fanueil Hall for religious meetings. Permission was granted in 1789 and the non-denominational prayer services led to the establishment

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Brighton High Valedictorian

In 1911 an African-American girl, F. Marion Reed, was valedictorian of her class at Brighton High School. With an overall average of 95 for her four years of high school study, she was in the top ten of academically achieving students out of 1,291 graduates from Boston high schools in 1911.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

M.D. Degree for Black Woman

The first African-American female graduate of a medical school was Rebecca Lee, who received an M.D. degree from the New England Female Medical College in Boston in 1864.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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