Pioneering Playwright

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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.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Benjamin and Sarah Roberts Lawsuit

Benjamin Roberts sued the Boston School Committee in 1849 for denying his daughter Sarah admission to an all-white Boston school. His action rallied school integration forces in the early 1850s, leading to the first official school desegregation in Boston in 1855. At that time the Massachusetts

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

20 Years or More in Journalism

An impressive roster of journalists have 'made news' on the Boston scene for more than 20 years. Among them: Robert (Bob) Jordan, columnist and editorial writer with the Boston Globe and the first African-American elected to head theGlobe's 1,200 member employees' union in 1989; Sarah Ann Shaw and

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Boston born and raised, Jimmy Slyde has gained national and international fame as a tap dancer in films and concerts. Studying dance with Stanley Brown and Mildred Davenport in Boston, he started his early career in the city's vaudeville, theaters, and nightclubs - the RKO, the Old Howard, and the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Construction Worker's Union

In 1967 the United States Community Construction Workers, led by Leo Fletcher, became the first Black construction workers' union in Boston.

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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

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

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

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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Rollins Griffith

Rollins Griffith (1925-1978) was the first African-American to assume the position of Assistant Superintendent of Schools in Boston with his appointment in 1970.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Musical Composer

Henry F. Williams, who was born in Boston in 1813, was an outstanding musician and composer for the violin and cornet, as well as the double bass, the viola, the violoncello, the baritone, the trombone, the tuba, and the pianoforte. He also arranged music for the Gilmore Band in Boston and was

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Largest Negro Weekly Newspaper

The Boston Chronicle, from 1920 to 1967, was 'New England's largest Negro Weekly Newspaper.' Published and edited by Alfred Haughton with William Harrison as Associate Editor, this Black community newspaper covered local, statewide, regional, national, and international news of people, places, and

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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 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

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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

Crispus Attucks

Crispus Attucks, an ex-slave from Framingham was the first to die in the Boston Massacre (1770), which some historians mark as the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. Attucks led a small group of colonists to a British garrison on King Street in Boston. One of the British soldiers panicked

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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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Female Federal Magistrate

Joyce London Alexander became the first Black woman in the country appointed as a federal magistrate in Boston when she was named to that post by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

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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

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Richard Earle Pioneer Club

The Richard Earle Pioneer Club served the Black railway workers in Boston during the first quarter of the century. Providing sleeping quarters, meals, and a place to relax for the Pullman porters, dining car waiters, and chefs during 'off hours,' The Pioneer Club was an important community

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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

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

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

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

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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First City Lawyer

In the 1930s Julian Rainey became the first Assistant Corporation Counsel for the city of Boston.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African Meeting House

In 1806 free Blacks in Boston, led by Cato Gardner, raised $7,700 to enable Black craftsmen and laborers to build the African Meeting House. The Meeting House served as an anchor for the Black settlement on Beacon Hill throughout the 1800s. Until 1898 the Meeting House served as the home of the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Academy of Musical Arts

The Academy of Musical Arts, founded by Anna Bobbit Gardner, has been providing music lessons in Boston for over 65 years. The Academy (originally called Pinaforte Studio) was started in the basement of her home on Claremont Park. When the school moved to its present site on Columbus Avenue, it

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Harriet Tubman House

In 1904 the Harriet Tubman House was founded in Boston's South End neighborhood by six Black women who donated their time, resources, and even their property to establish a settlement house to 'assist working girls (from the South) in charitable ways.' Julia O. Henson (a personal friend of

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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