Phillis Wheatley

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Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley, a slave in Boston who gained her freedom in 1772, became the first African-American to publish a book of poetry,Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Legendary Community Politicians

From the mid-1920s through the 1950s, brothers Silas F. and Balcom S. Taylor, Registered Pharmacists, championed voter registration, jobs, housing, and political participation for Blacks in Boston, when there were no elected Black officials in city or state government. Their drugstore on Tremont

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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

Early Career Officer

Colonel Frank M. Snowden (1885-1947) of Boston joined the U.S. Army in 1907 and rose through the ranks, in an era when few Blacks became officers, to become a colonel. After leaving the service in 1945 he served as civilian executive of the First Service Command (U.S. Army) in Boston.

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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

First Black Woman in Legislature

Doris Bunte was the first African-American woman to serve in the Massachusetts legislature. Elected in 1972, she served as state representative until 1985.

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African-Americans first served as jurors in Massachusetts in 1860.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Published Novelist

William Wells Brown, a novelist, playwright, historian, essayist, lecturer, physician, and abolitionist, spent most of his life and published most of his work in Boston. He is especially noted forClotel: or The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853), the first

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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

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

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

Harvard Medical Graduate

In 1951 Dr. Mildred Jefferson became the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Female Journalist

Lillian Lewis was the first African-American woman journalist in Boston. In the 1880s, she wrote for The Advocate, a Black community newspaper. She then went toThe Boston Herald, writing under the name of Bert Islew, scrambling the letters of her last name to disguise the fact that she was

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

19th-Century Statesman

Julius C. Chappelle had one of the most successful careers in Boston electoral politics of the late 19th century. He was elected to the Republican State Central Committee, the Boston City Council, and the state legislature. He served in the state House of Representatives from 1883 to 1886, the

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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

In June 1968 Unity Bank, the first full-service Black bank in Boston, opened its doors for business. Approximately 70 percent of the $1.2 million in bank assets was raised by subscription in the Black community.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Brighton High Valedictorian

In 1911 an African-American girl, F. Marion Reed, was valedictorian of her class at Brighton High School. With an overall average of 95 for her four years of high school study, she was in the top ten of academically achieving students out of 1,291 graduates from Boston high schools in 1911.

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Celebrant at Holy Cross Cathedral

Rev. John H. Dorsey, the second African-American priest in the American Catholic Church, celebrated Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston's South End on August 17, 1902. The Pilot said of his stay in Boston: 'This young priest's visit to Boston has benefitted all classes.' The Guardian

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Ward 9 Politicians

From Boston's 'old' Ward 9 in the Beacon Hill area, Boston's Black citizens were able to elect 20 Black persons to public office - to the city council, the state legislature, and school committee - during the second half of the 19th century.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Negro Business and Professional Women's Club

A vital force in Boston's business development for more than 30 years, the Boston Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs was organized in 1957 'to create and develop opportunities for African-American women in business and the professions and to protect their interests.'

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Top Black Businesses

In Black Enterprise magazine's listings of the top 100 Black companies and the 100 largest Black auto dealers in the United States during the late 1980s, a number of Boston area-based businesses made the lists: B.M.L. Associates (telecommunications); Grimes Oil Company (petroleum products

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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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Theodore Drury, who had earlier produced operas with Black casts in New York City, organized and trained a Black company in Boston in the early years of the 20th century. In 1907 'Aida' and a scene from 'Carmen' were produced, and 'Faust' and 'Cavalleria Rusticana' in the following year.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Malcolm X, formerly Malcolm Little (1925-1965), was one of the most fiery, controversial leaders of his time and one of the major Black leaders of the 20th century. Growing up in Boston during the 1940s, he became involved in criminal activities which landed him a ten-year prison sentence. While in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Bolling Family: Political Phenomenon

The Bolling family represented a phenomenon unprecedented in Boston politics in the early 1980s, when three members held elective office at the same time - Royal Bolling, Sr., served as state senator, while his son Royal Bolling, Jr., served as state representative, and his son Bruce Bolling served

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Nurse in Civil War

Susie King Taylor (1848-19?), who distinguished herself as a nurse with the Union forces during the Civil War, moved to Boston in 1874 to work as a laundress. In 1886 she helped organize Corps 67 of the Boston Branch of the Women's Relief Corps, the auxiliary to the Grand Army of the

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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

TV Executive First

When Donna Latson Gittens was named vice president of community programming for WCVB-TV in 1983, she became the first African-American in the history of local television to assume this executive position and one of a relatively few in the nation.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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