Gymnasium Owner

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Gymnasium Owner

Peyton Stewart, who was in the clothes cleaning business in the mid-1800s, opened a gymnasium with mostly white patronage on the corner of Boylston and Washington Streets. Assisted by his daughter in giving athletic instructions, he operated this prosperous business until his death in 1870.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Head of Massachusetts Commandery

In 1906 James H. Wolff, a lawyer and Civil War veteran, was elected head of the Massachusetts Commandery of the Grand Army of the Republic, a largely white organization.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

John B. Cruz Construction Company

The John B. Cruz Construction Co., established in Boston in 1945, has expanded into one of the largest minority-owned construction firms in the U.S. This family-owned and operated business has constructed both housing and commercial complexes to revitalize Boston's Black neighborhoods.

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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

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

Hattie B. Cooper Community Center

The Hattie B. Cooper Community Center, started in the early 1920s by Union Methodist Church (now Union United Methodist Church) as a settlement house, is still 'in business.' Described in church conference minutes of 1922 as 'a bee-hive of helpful activities among colored people of the South

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Major 20th-Century Artists

Among the leading 20th-century Black artists whose works have educated and contributed to the life of all Bostonians are Ellen Banks, John Barbour, Roger Beatty, Calvin Burnett, Dana Chandler, Robin Chandler, Allan Rohan Crite, Milton Derr, Paul Goodnight, James Guilford, Barbara Holt, Arnold

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Martha's Vineyard

For more than 100 years the island of Martha's Vineyard (seven miles off the southeast coast of Massachusetts) has been an important summertime haven for Black Bostonians. In the late 1800s Blacks first came to the island to work for whites and some earned enough money to gain small summer vacation

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

In 1787 Prince Hall founded Boston's African Lodge Number 459, the first African Masonic Lodge in the country and the beginning of Black Masonry in the United States. The Lodge, currently located at 18 Washington Street in the Grove Hall section of Dorchester, is one of the few Masonic lodges

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

South End Electric Company

In 1923 Leon G. Lomax founded the South End Electric Company in Roxbury, a firm which stayed in business until the early 1970s. Lomax also organized and became president of the Greater Boston Negro Business and Trade Association in 1938.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneer Historian and Minister

George Washington William (1849-1891) was a graduate of Newton Theological Seminary (1874) and the Pastor of Boston's Twelfth Baptist Church from 1874-1876. After seven years of research he authoredA History of the Negro Race in American from 1619 to 1880: Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers and as

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Negro Business and Professional Women's Club

A vital force in Boston's business development for more than 30 years, the Boston Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs was organized in 1957 'to create and develop opportunities for African-American women in business and the professions and to protect their interests.'

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Leading Dentist

Dr. W. Alexander Cox had a large dental practice among Black and white patients in Cambridge during the early 1900s. He was the founder and president of the dental section of the National Medical Association. In the late 1800s Dr. Cox was owner and publisher of the Advocate, the only newspaper

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

90 Black Churches

The number of Black churches in Boston grew from two in 1830 to five by 1850. One was the Free Church, later named Tremont Temple, established in 1836 as an integrated church protesting segregated seating in Boston's white churches. Today there are over 90 churches that 'identify with the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Trailblazing Dancer

Born in Roxbury in 1900, Mildred Davenport became a trailblazing dancer and renowned dance instructor. Her first career was in show business. In 1938 she danced her interpretation of the African-American spirituals with the Boston Pops. She appeared on Broadway with such reviews as 'Blackbirds' and

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

High Hurdles Champ

Eddie Dugger of Medford was National Collegiate Athletic Association high hurdles champion in 1940.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Black Reporter

Bob Teanoh was perhaps the first African-American reporter for a white newspaper in Boston, having obtained a staff position in 1890 withThe Boston Daily Globe. He was elected to the state legislature in 1894.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Boston Latin Graduates

Parker Bailey (Class of 1877) and Clement Morgan (Class of 1886) were the first Black graduates of the Boston Latin School. Both went on to Harvard College. Bailey pursued a lifetime of teaching at the M Street High School in Washington, D.C., Morgan graduated from Harvard Law School and served as

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Builder of the Twelfth Baptist Church

Rev. Leonard Grimes, who became the minister of Twelfth Baptist Church in 1848, led this historic church through the turbulent years of anti-slavery (1850-1865), serving the church until his death in 1873. Established in 1840, Twelfth Baptist is 150 years old.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Political Writer

Hailed as America's first Black political writer, Maria W. Stewart, an early Boston activist, championed women's rights and Black self-improvement in a series of speeches and essays written between 1831 and 1833. She was probably the first Black American to lecture publicly in defense of

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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

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

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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

Prominent New Bedford Lawyer

Emmanuel Sullavou was a prominent lawyer in New Bedford in the late 1800s. Having graduated from Harvard in 1871, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1875. He served on the New Bedford City Council and as a clerk of the district court.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

James Monroe Trotter

In 1885 James Monroe Trotter published a widely acclaimed book, Music and Some Highly Musical People, a tribute to some 200 Black groups and individuals for their musical achievement in Boston and the United States during the 1800s.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Civil War Caterer and Senator

For more than 25 years Joshua B. Smith (1813-1879) operated a thriving catering business for private individuals and abolitionist organizations as well as for the troops during the Civil War. He represented Cambridge as a Senator in the state legislature during 1873 and 1874.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Racist Song Removed

In 1915 the Boston Branch NAACP won a victory when it persuaded the Boston School Committee to withdraw from the schools the bookForty Best Songs. The local NAACP objected to the words 'darky', 'nigger,' and 'massa' in the songs, and said in its petition to the committee that 'our [Black] children

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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

Printing Business Pioneer

Established in 1952, Lester Benn's printing business has served the needs of the Black community for nearly 40 years. Enamored of the art of the printing trade, Lester Benn struggled throughout the 1940s to become and independent printer, acquiring the 'bits and pieces' of used machinery and doing

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

While The Liberator newspaper (1831-1869), founded by the militant white abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, was an anti-slavery organ, it was also a journal for Black Americans throughout Boston and the East. The paper provided a network with its listing of death notices and social

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

South End Physician

Dr. John B. Hall, Sr., served as the secretary of the South End Medical Society (a group of white physicians) from its beginning in 1926 until 1952. During his career as a prominent South End physician, Dr. Hall held posts as medical examiner for the Massachusetts Insurance Department and with the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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