Labor Unions

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Labor Unions

Labor unions for Blacks in Boston came into existence in the late 1800s with the establishment of the Boston Colored Waiter's Alliance or Local 183 of the American Federation of Labor. Members were so-called public waiters not regularly employed, but hired for catering and temporary hotel and restaurant jobs. They held their charter from the white waiters' alliance, but they withdrew to form a semi-independent group.

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

20th-Century Novelist

Dorothy West, born in 1910 and raised in Boston, became a leading novelist, short-story writer, editor, and columnist. Her novelThe Living Is Easy (about growing up Black in Boston) was published in 1948; currently she writes a column for theVineyard Gazette on Martha's Vineyard Island.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Public School

In 1808 the first 'public' school for Boston's African-American children was opened in the basement of the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill. Prince Saunders, and African-American teacher at the African Meeting House school, persuaded white businessman Abiel Smith to donate securities in his

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Founder of Equal Rights Newspaper

J. Gordon Street was a journalist for three of Boston's white newspapers in the 1880s: theBoston Beacon, theBoston Evening Record, andThe Boston Herald. Critical of the white American press' neglect of discrimination faced by Blacks in the late 19th century, he established a Black newspaper, The

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Nationally Known Dancer

Stanley E. Brown (1902-1977) was a nationally known dancer and dance instructor in Boston from 1929 to 1977. Founder of the Stanley Brown Dance Studio, he trained and coached hundreds of professionals. 'Sugar Ray' Robinson took tap lessons from Brown as did Cab Calloway, Diana Ross, and Lola

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Art historian Edmund B. Gaither, curator and director of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, has been a leading spokesman for the Black artist in Boston for over 25 years. He is internationally known as an advocate of African-American visual artists and as a contributor to

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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

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass gave his first anti-slavery speech on Nantucket Island in August 1841, a speech which propelled him into the anti-slavery cause. He soon found his way to Boston where he became a leader of the movement.

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Leading Businesswoman

A leading African-American businesswoman in Boston for more than 20 years, Estella V. Crosby owned and operated a dry goods store on Tremont Street. She chaired the annual convention of the National Business League in Boston in 1955, organized the Housewives League, and was active in the League of

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Female Anti-Slavery Leader

Susan Paul of Boston, daughter of Rev. Thomas Paul, served as vice president of the Second Annual Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in Philadelphia in 1839.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Prime Time First

In 1982, Liz Walker became the first African-American in Boston's TV history to anchor a prime time weekly newscast. She co-hosts the 6:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts on WBZ-TV (Channel 4).

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Renowned Artist

In the mid-19th century Edward M. Bannister became one of the earliest Black artists in Boston to win widespread praise for his work. His crayon portraits were noted for their excellence. He later moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he became the principal founder of the Providence Art Club.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Adelphic Union Library Association

Boston's early 19th-century Black community was concerned with education and cultural needs. In 1838 the Adelphic Union Library Association was formed to encourage intellectual debates and offer lectures. At a time when women were generally excluded from public lectures, the Adelphic Union opened

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population in 1970

In 1970, 51 percent of Boston's African-Americans had been born outside of Massachusetts and had migrated to the state, and most of the newcomers (29 percent of the entire Black population) were of southern origin.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. Benjamin Quarles, Historian

Dr. Benjamin Quarles, born in Boston in 1904 and a graduate of English High School, became an eminent 20th-century African-American historian. He is the author ofThe Negro in the Making of America, Black Abolitionists, Lincoln and the Negro, The Negro in the American Revolution, and a definitive

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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

Pioneering Teacher of Reading

Wilhelmina Crosson, one of the first African-American teachers in the Boston Public Schools (1923-1949), started her career at the Hancock School in the North End. Working in the Italian-American community with first-generation Italian children, she instituted the first remedial reading program in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Young Masters of Ceremonies

Maceo Harris, a 12-year-old student at the Sherman School in Roxbury, was the master of ceremonies for Boston's observance of Benjamin Franklin's birthday anniversary in 1932. The ceremony was conducted in front of Franklin's statue on the lawn at City Hall. Mayor James Curley said of young

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Allan Rohan Crite

Allan Rohan Crite (1910 - ) is Boston's most distinguished Black artist and art historian, noted for an eclectic range of subjects - from religious themes to neighborhood scenes. His religious artwork can be seen in the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin on Lenox Street in lower Roxbury. His

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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

Legendary NAACP Leader

From her arrival in Boston in 1927 until her death at age 94, E. Alice Taylor (1892-1986) served as a business woman, church leader, and Boston NAACP official, leaving a legend of 58 continuous years of community service. For 50 years she served as an officer and board member of the Boston branch

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Eminent Foreign Correspondent

William Worthy, Jr., born in Boston in 1921 and educated in its public schools, served as an eminent and significant foreign correspondent and columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American from 1951 to 1980; as a special CBS News correspondent in China, Africa, and the Soviet Union between 1955-57; and

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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

Drop-A-Dime/Report-A-Crime, Inc.

This anti-drug program, Drop-A-Dime/Report-A-Crime, Inc., was founded in 1983 by Georgette Watson and Rev. Bruce Wall to combat the rampant drug trade, especially in the African-American communities. As an executive director, Watson used a telephone hot-line approach for anonymous callers to inform

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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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

School Desegregation in 1855

In September 1855, after a long boycott of Black-only schools led by William C. Nell and a petition to the legislature that schools in Boston be desegregated, Blacks in Boston were free to attend previously all-white schools.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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

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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

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

Education Facts

Business Facts

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