Housing Discrimination Victories

BlackFacts Details

Housing Discrimination Victories

In 1989 the Boston branch of the NAACP won two major lawsuits for housing discrimination . Both cases were unique because they were the 'first of their kind' in the country to award individuals monetary compensation, according to Attorney Dianne Wilkerson, the NAACP Housing Committee Chairperson. The first case filed in 1978 against the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took 11 years to move through the courts. The court ruled that HUD failed in its statutory duty to monitor federal funds and in doing so contributed to discriminatory practices against Black residents in Boston. This ruling brought sweeping institutional changes in federal housing expenditures and requires monitoring and enforcement by the Boston Fair Housing Commission. The second case was filed in May 1988 against the Boston Housing Authority for discrimination in its selection policy of segregating prospective tenants who were Black, Hispanic, and Asian-American, by 'systematically steering hundreds of Black families away from predominantly white housing projects in Charlestown, South Boston, and East Boston.' In addition to the monetary compensation afforded to the victims, plaintiffs not already in public housing will get first choice of vacancies. The NAACP victory also included the creation of a Community Benefits Fund, financed at half a million dollars, to develop projects for integrated housing in Boston.

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

Knights of Pythias

The Knights of Pythias was a fraternal and benevolent order in Boston's small and growing Black community in lower Roxbury that provided effective health insurance and death benefits to widows and orphans. Anchored in its own building at the corner of Ruggles and Washington Streets, it helped

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

'Rider of Dreams'

In February 1927 the Boston Stage Society, an affiliate of the Ford Hall Forum, presented the first Negro play to gain a wide audience in Boston, 'The Rider of Dreams,' by Ridley Torrence.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Harvard Phi Beta Kappa

In 1895 Boston's William Monroe Trotter became the first Black to receive a Phi Beta Kappa key from Harvard University.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Muriel Snowden International High School

While Muriel Snowden (1916-1988) was still alive, the Boston School Committee renamed Copley Square High School, the Muriel Snowden International High School, in recognition of Mrs. Snowden's efforts to foster the study of other cultures and foreign languages among urban youth and for co-founding

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Government Administrator

On his way to an affirmative action meeting with the Boston Redevelopment Authority on April 5, 1976, African-American attorney Theodore Landsmark was physically assaulted by anti-busing demonstrators on City Hall plaza. One of the demonstrators swung an American flag at him. Landsmark's flag

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

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

Pioneering Public Servant

Clarence Richard Elam (1923-1985) performed as a pioneering public servant as Assistant Director of Civil Defense for the City of Boston form 1950-52, Executive Secretary of the Governor's Council (1952-56), Chairman of the Boston Licensing Board (1956-74), and Special Assistant to Attorney General

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

'Finest Boxer to Wear Gloves'

Sam Langford of Boston and Cambridge had by his own count 650 boxing bouts between 1902 and 1926; 250 of his fights were officially recorded. Standing just 5 feet 7 inches, and weighing 165 pounds - the size of a middleweight - Langford fought as a heavyweight and held the so-called Negro and

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Prosperous Dressmaker

Eliza Ann Gardner conducted a prosperous dress-making business in Boston before the Civil War and did the delicate needlework for the first banner made for the Plymouth Rock Chapter of Odd Fellows.

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Action for Boston Community Development, Inc.

Since 1962, Action for Boston Community Development, Inc. ( ABCD) has fostered community development in the city. For over 20 years Robert M. Coard has served as director, one of the longest continuous tenures for a community agency leader in the city of Boston. On the human side of urban

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Newspaper

Boston's first Black newspaper of record before the Civil War was the Emancipator and Free American, founded in 1842 and closed in 1844.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Psychiatrist

Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller (1872-1953), acknowledged as the first Black to practice psychiatry in America, graduated from Boston University's Medical School in 1897 and practiced psychiatry in Boston and Framingham until 1937.

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Graduate, New England Conservatory of Music

Rachel M. Washington was the first African-American to graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music in the year 1876. She served as organist and choir director at Twelfth Baptist Church in the latter half of the 19th century and was a leading music teacher in Boston's Black community.

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

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pauline Hopkins, a Black high school student in Boston, won the first prize of 'ten dollars in gold,' offered by the Congregational Publishing Society of Boston in 1895 for her essay on the 'Evils of Intemperance and Their Remedies.' She went on to become a writer for theColored American

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Commissioner of Community Affairs

Julian Steele, a Boston Latin School and Harvard graduate, as the director of the Robert Gould Shaw House in the 1930s, was the leader in the expansion of social, recreational, and educational programs for the youth of the South End and lower Roxbury. From 1938-49 he directed the

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Ex-Slave Founded Church

In 1871 ex-slaves from Virginia, led by Rev. Peter Randolph, founded Ebenezer Baptist Church, which celebrated 100 years of service in Boston in 1981.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Ruth M. Batson Educational Foundation

The Ruth M. Batson Educational Foundation was established in 1969 'to help improve the quality of education and to expand educational opportunities for those who have been relegated to a disadvantaged category because of discrimination.' In its first 20 years the Foundation made over 160 grants

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

Africans in Boston Before 1638?

In 1638, eight years after the original settlement of Boston, a ship named Desire arrived in Boston with the first American slaves. Built in Marblehead, the merchant vessel brought its cargo of cotton, tobacco, and slaves from Providence Island in the Bahamas. There is reason to believe that Black

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Professional and Business Men's Club

From its founding in 1946 by Black professional and business men of Boston until its closing in 1987, the Professional and Business Men's Club, also called the P&B, was a unique community institution at 542 Massachusetts Avenue. It was 'a place where you could get know â€˜something' or

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

NAACP Educational Counseling Committee

The Boston Branch of the NAACP founded its Educational Counseling Committee in 1948 to provide higher education information and guidance to Black young people in Boston high schools. Twenty years later in 1968 the Committee counseled over 340 students and awarded $20,000 in direct college aid to 60

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Massachusetts Legislators

The first Blacks elected to the Massachusetts legislature in the 20th century were William H. Lewis (from Cambridge in 1909) and Lincoln Pope (from Boston in 1956), with Pope being the first Black Democrat to represent Boston in the legislature.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Sports Facts

Literature Facts

Blackfacts BETA RELEASE 11.5.3
(Production Environment)