Literary Giant

BlackFacts Details

Literary Giant

William Stanley Brathwaite (1878-1962) of Boston was a significant force in the development of creative American literature from 1906 to 1936. He was a poet, journalist, essayist, and pioneering anthologist of American poetry, writing some 31 books of poetry and prose. In 1918 he received the coveted Spingarn Medal from the NAACP for his many achievements.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Bay State Banner

The Bay State Banner, Boston's African-American newspaper founded in 1965 and published by Melvin Miller, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1990.

fave

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

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

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).

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Rev. Vernon Carter's Vigil

In 1965 Rev. Vernon Carter, minister of the All Saints Lutheran Church in Boston's South End in the 1950s and 1960s, conducted a personal 114-day vigil/march in front of the Boston School Committee Headquarters to protest racial imbalance in the Boston schools.

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

Black Newspaper Publisher

In 1838 Benjamin Roberts (who worked for The Liberator under William Lloyd Garrison) established the Anti-Slavery Herald, intended to be an anti-slavery journal by and for Blacks in Boston. Only a few issues were printed. In 1853 Roberts tried again establishing a Black paper called Self Elevator.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Heritage Trail

The Black Heritage Trail on Beacon Hill in Boston is a walking tour which explores the history of the city's 19th-century African-American community. The tour was started in 1963 as an informal walking tour of some 10 sites by J. Marcus Mitchell, the first curator of the Museum of Negro History

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

NAACP President for 20 Years

Butler Wilson presided over the Boston Branch of the NAACP from 1916 to 1936, the longest presidential tenure in its history.

fave

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

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity

In another approach to upgrading education for Boston's Black students, the Metropolitan Council for Education Opportunity ( METCO) was founded in 1966, and 219 Boston students began attending school in seven suburban communities (Newton, Brookline, Wellesley, Lexington, Lincoln, Arlington, and

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston Bank of Commerce

Incorporated on June 30, 1982, with Juan M. Cofield as its leading founder and president from 1982-1983, Boston Bank of Commerce is the only fully insured Black-owned and operated bank in Boston and New England. A successor to Unity Bank and Trust, Boston's first Black-owned Bank, the Boston Bank

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Secretary of Transportation

Real estate entrepreneur Richard Taylor was appointed in 1988 to the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; and in 1990 he became Deputy Chairman, both first appointments for an African-American in Boston. The Federal Reserve is 'the banker's bank,' controlling the money supply

fave

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

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Writer of Race Politics

During the first quarter of the 20th century George W. Forbes (1864-1927) was an important journalist for national race politics. From 1893 to 1903, he edited the Boston Courant, one of Boston's early Black newspapers. He helped start the Boston Guardian, founded and published by William M. Trotter

fave

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.

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

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

Slavery Abolished in Massachusetts

The year 1773 saw increasing agitation among Blacks in Boston and Massachusetts for an end to slavery. On January 6, then in April, and again in May, they sent petitions first to royal General Thomas Gage and next to the Massachusetts legislature, denouncing slavery as destructive of natural rights

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population 1708-1752

Throughout the colonial era Boston contained the largest number of Blacks in Massachusetts. The flourishing slave trade and increased birthrate expanded the Black population from 400 in 1708 to 1,374 in 1742. In 1708 there were 33 free Blacks in Boston. In 1742 one-third of all Blacks in

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

'Dean' of Black Lawyers

Henry E. Quarles, Sr., born in Boston in 1906, and a graduate of Suffolk Law School in 1928, is considered 'The Dean' of Black lawyers in Boston. He holds the distinction of having the longest legal career - 61 years of practice as an attorney - in Boston. He received an Honorary Doctor of Law from

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

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

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Leads Rally - Part 2

In April 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a graduate of Boston University School of Theology, led a march from Roxbury to a rally on Boston Common to protest the evils of school segregation in Boston. Dr. King spoke at the State House where he appealed to the Massachusetts legislature to end

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Leads Rally

In April 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a graduate of Boston University School of Theology, led a march from Roxbury to a rally on Boston Common to protest the evils of school segregation in Boston. Dr. King spoke at the State House where he appealed to the Massachusetts legislature to end

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Lifestyle Facts

Science Facts

Arts Facts

Blackfacts BETA RELEASE 11.5.3
(Production Environment)