Melnea Cass

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Melnea Cass

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.

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.

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Female Law Firm

Attorneys Margaret Burnham, Geraldine Hines, and Judith Dilday established the first Black female law firm in New England in 1989. Located in Boston, Burnham, Hines and Dilday specialize in family law, divorce, wills, custody, and civil and criminal litigation.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Stull and Lee, Inc.

The architectural and planning firm of Stull and Lee, Inc., established by Donald L. Stull in 1966, has made a profound impact on the physical environment and landscape of Boston. With co-partner David Less and a staff of 40 design professionals - architects, planners, and urban designers - Stull

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Businesses in 1846

Nearly 200 of Boston's 800 black residents operated businesses in 1846.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Urban League of Boston

The Urban League of Boston was established in May 1919 and has been dedicated to the economic and social development of Boston's African-American people and neighborhoods for 70 years. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s especially, the Boston affiliate of the National Urban League was a significant

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Licensed Attorney

Macon B. Allen, who was the first licensed African-American attorney in the United States (he passed the bar exam in Maine in 1844), was the first to practice law in Boston, having been admitted to the Suffolk County, Massachusetts bar in May 1845. He became a Justice of the Peace in 1848 and

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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

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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

New England Anti-Slavery Society

The New England Anti-Slavery Society, successor to the Massachusetts General Colored Association, was founded at Boston's African Meeting House in 1832, becoming the leading, most eloquent, most effective voice in the battle against slavery. (Note: The Caution poster in the other panel was not

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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

Eureka Co-Operative Bank

David E. Crawford opened Eureka Co-Operative Bank in Boston in 1910, 'the only bank in the East owned and operated by â€˜Colored People.'' He was appointed a master in the Chancery by the Governor of Massachusetts in 1915, and in 1916 the citizens of Boston elected him as a delegate to the National

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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

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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Oldest NAACP Branch

The Boston Branch of the NAACP, the first official and now the oldest branch of the NAACP, developed out of the Boston Committee to Advance the Cause of the Negro, established in 1910. Gathering in 1912 at the Park Street Church, 56 Bostonians (Black and white) received the official Branch charter

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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

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

Black Nurses Admitted to City Hospital

Led by two Black doctors, W.O. Taylor and William Worthy, a committee of Black Bostonians that includedGuardian editor William Monroe Trotter successfully championed the cause of two Black high school graduates seeking admission to the nurses' training program at Boston's City Hospital in

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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

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

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 City Appointment

The first appointment of an African-American to a city position in Boston appears to have been that of W. W. Bryant, who in 1885 was made deputy sealer of weights and measures.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Black Newspapers

The Afro-American Pressand Its Editors, the Boston Co-Operator, The Boston Leader, The Advocate, the Courant, and The Boston Observer were early Black newspapers in Boston during the 1880s and 1890s.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Elma Lewis School

The Elma Lewis School was established in 1950 to give expert training in the arts to children, youth, and adults. Its students have performed on Broadway and in symphony orchestras. During its 40 years of existence, the School has been producing professional artists and changing the quality of life

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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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

New England Slave Trade

The year 1644 was a momentous date in the history of the New England slave trade. Before that time Massachusetts merchants had occasionally brought in Black Africans from the West Indies; but in that year Boston traders imported slaves directly from Africa, when an association of businessmen sent

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Long Bay Management

Since 1970 Long Bay Management, led by founder and president Kenneth Guscott, has built, renovated, and managed more than 1,000 housing units in Roxbury.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Eyes on the Prize

Eyes on the Prize - America's Civil Rights Years 1954 - 1965, a television mini-series produced by Henry Hampton, President of Blackside, Inc., a film production company in Boston, was seen by over 20 million national viewers in 1987. This story of the modern civil rights movement won several

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Abolitionist Group

When a group of Black Bostonians founded the Massachusetts General Colored Association in 1826 to fight for an end to slavery, they became Boston's primary abolition organization.

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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