Histrionic Club

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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.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Businesses in 1900

Of the 197 Boston businesses operated by Blacks in 1900, 70 were in wholesale and retail trade, 107 were in personal service, and 20 were in other lines (for example, printing, newspaper publishing, cigar manufacturing, banking, and real estate rental). Those with personal services included

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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

Academy of Musical Arts

The Academy of Musical Arts, founded by Anna Bobbit Gardner, has been providing music lessons in Boston for over 65 years. The Academy (originally called Pinaforte Studio) was started in the basement of her home on Claremont Park. When the school moved to its present site on Columbus Avenue, it

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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

Distinguished Black Judge

Harry J. Elam became the first Black to serve as a Justice in the more than 300-year history of the Boston Municipal Court when he was appointed in 1971 as an Associate Justice. In 1978 he was the unanimous choice of the full bench of the Supreme Judicial Court to serve a five-year term as Chief

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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

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

Crispus Attucks

Crispus Attucks, an ex-slave from Framingham was the first to die in the Boston Massacre (1770), which some historians mark as the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Attucks led a small group of colonists to a British garrison on King Street in Boston. One of the British soldiers panicked

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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

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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Coburn's Gaming House

John P. Coburn (1811-1873), a prosperous clothing dealer and property owner, hired the famous Boston architect Asher Benjamin to design a home which he eventually used as a gaming house. Built in 1843 and still standing at the corner of Phillips and Irving Streets on Beacon Hill, Coburn's Gaming

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Beginning in the fall of 1968, Black student unions were formed in most Boston high schools to defend the rights of Black students and to push for educational reform in Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Jazz Concert in Boston Church

A jazz concert of sacred music by the legendary Duke Ellington and his orchestra was performed at Union Methodist Church in July, 1966, the first time a jazz performance had been held in a Boston church.

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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.'

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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

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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

Long-Running TV Programs

'Say Brother,' produced by WGBH-TV (Channel 2) for the past 20 years, is the longest running television show targeted to the African-American and minority communities in Boston. 'Urban Update' (formerly 'Black News') on WHDH (Channel 7) is a close second with a nearly 18-year on-air history.

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African-Americans in 1790

There were 766 African-Americans (4 percent of the population) counted in Boston in the first United State Census in 1790.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Minutemen

Peter Salem of Framingham, Job Potomea and Isaiah Barjonah of Stoneham, Cuff Whitemore of Cambridge, Prince of Brookline, and Pompey of Braintree were among the Blacks in greater Boston who joined the Minutemen before the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775. Salem is remembered for fatally shooting

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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

Media and Political Strategist

In 1986 the Boston Globe called media and political strategist Joyce Ferriabough, the only woman to break into the campaign managers' circle when she guided Charles Yancey's historic run for State Auditor. Regularly quoted in the news media for her views on political trends, especially as they

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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

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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African Meeting House

In 1806 free Blacks in Boston, led by Cato Gardner, raised $7,700 to enable Black craftsmen and laborers to build the African Meeting House. The Meeting House served as an anchor for the Black settlement on Beacon Hill throughout the 1800s. Until 1898 the Meeting House served as the home of the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population 1910-1980

By 1910 Boston's Black population was 13,500, and in 1940 it was only 23,000. Between 1940 and 1960 the Black population of Boston jumped to 63,000, and by 1980 it was approximately 120,000.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Black Neighborhood

Between 1800 and 1900 most of Boston's African American residents lived in the West End, between Pinckney and Cambridge Streets and between Joy and Charles Streets - a neighborhood now called the north slope of Beacon Hill.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Stable/Livery Business

African-American businessman Henry C. Turner (1852-1919) owned a boarding stable and garage (1890-1919) and operated a large livery business in Boston, servicing a mostly white clientele. Constructed in 1900, his stable and garage, always ready with horses, buggies, and carriages for hire, still

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Advocate for Community Development

Charles 'Chuck' Turner, executive director of the Center for Community Action, has been a community organizer, activist, and advocate for Boston's African-American community for over 20 years. He has a record of effectively organizing people to confront city and state agencies for jobs, affordable

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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

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