Prosperous Dressmaker

BlackFacts Details

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.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Former Owners of Channel 7

WNEV-TV (now WHDH-TV, Channel 7) in Boston was the first major television station in the country to have Black people as majority owners when, between 1981 and 1986, Bertram Lee, Ruth Batson, Thomas Brown, Henry Hampton, Joyce Fredkin, Melvin Miller, and Barron Martin were major stockholders.

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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

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

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

In 1983 Mel King changed Boston's political history when he became the first Black mayoral candidate in the city's history to win a preliminary election and run in the general election for control of Boston City Hall. While defeated in the runoff by Ray Flynn, he gathered 30 percent of the general

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Leading Tennis Player

Titus Sparrow was a leading tennis player in Boston and New England in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a tennis official of the old Boston Tennis Club and its offspring, the Roxbury Sportsmen. He was the winner of numerous trophies, including the New England Gardner Clase Bowl, awarded annually by the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Female Dentist

Dr. Jessie G. Garnett (1897-1976) was the first Black woman dentist in Boston. A 1919 graduate of Tufts Dental School and the first Black woman to graduate from Tufts Dental, she practiced for 50 years until 1970. Dr. Garnett once recalled, 'When I first started, patients came to the office and saw

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Congressional Medal of Honor Winner

Sergeant William Carney of New Bedford, a member of the famed 54th Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War, was the first African-American awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery at the battle of Fort Wagner in July 1863. The U.S. flag he saved during the battle still hangs in the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Episcopal Bishop

The Rev. John M. Burgess of Boston became the first African-American diocesan Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States in 1968.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

A group of Black women led by Wilhelmina Crosson started the Aristo Club in 1924 to teach African-American history in the Boston schools and Black community and to boost educational and cultural opportunities for Boston's Black youth. In 1926 the Club sponsored the first official Negro History Week

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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

Black Population by 1890

In 1820 the Black population of Boston was 1,690; in 1890 it was 8,125.

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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

First Black Judge

George L. Ruffin of Boston became the first African-American judge in Massachusetts with his appointment in 1883 to the District Court of Charlestown. He served in this position until his death in 1886. In 1869 he was the first African-American to earn a law degree from Harvard University. In 1984

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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

M.D. Degree for Black Woman

The first African-American female graduate of a medical school was Rebecca Lee, who received an M.D. degree from the New England Female Medical College in Boston in 1864.

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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

Civil War Caterer and Senator

For more than 25 years Joshua B. Smith (1813-1879) operated a thriving catering business for private individuals and abolitionist organizations as well as for the troops during the Civil War. He represented Cambridge as a Senator in the state legislature during 1873 and 1874.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Orthopedic Surgeon-in-Chief

In 1978 when Dr. Augustus A. White II became Orthopedic Surgeon-in-Chief at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School, he became the first African-American to serve as chairman of a clinical department in a major teaching hospital. He is the senior co-author

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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

Plymouth Hospital - 2nd Picture

Pictures: Operating room at Plymouth Hospital Dr. Cornelius Garlandctx_20th_Plymouth_Hosp_2 Nursing graduates of Plymouth Hospitalctx_20th_Plymouth_Hosp_3 Plymouth Hospital and Nurses' Training School, founded and operated by Dr. Cornelius Garland, a Black doctor, from 1908 to 1928, contributed to

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Underground Railroad Leader

Lewis Hayden, a leading 19th-century Black abolitionist who harbored over two-thirds of Boston's fugitive slaves in his Beacon Hill house prior to the Civil War, was elected to the Massachusetts General Court in 1873.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Colored American Magazine

The Colored American Magazine, the first significant Black periodical to appear in Boston in the 20th century, was started in Boston in May 1900 by the Colored Cooperative Publishing Company. It was 'devoted to Literature, Science, Music, Art, Religion, Facts, Fiction, and Traditions of the Negro

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Church in Faneuil Hall

While Black people in Boston attended white churches after the American Revolution, increasing incidents of racial discrimination moved them to request the use of Fanueil Hall for religious meetings. Permission was granted in 1789 and the non-denominational prayer services led to the establishment

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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

'Black Nativity,' a folk-song rendering of the Christian story based on Langston Hughes's gospel song-play about the birth of Christ, has become an annual tradition in Boston since 1969. First presented in the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts, it has attracted a wider audience in its performances on

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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

Black Businesses in 1900

Of the 197 Boston businesses operated by Blacks in 1900, 70 were in wholesale and retail trade, 107 were in personal service, and 20 were in other lines (for example, printing, newspaper publishing, cigar manufacturing, banking, and real estate rental). Those with personal services included

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Robert C. Hayden, Author/Historian

Robert C. Hayden has been the leading researcher and writer of Boston African-American history for over 20 years. From 1974-1983 he wrote a weekly column entitled 'Boston's Black History' forThe Bay State Banner newspaper. His other works includeFaith, Culture and Leadership: A History of the Black

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Charles Street A.M.E. Church

In 1983, Charles Street A.M.E. Church celebrated its 150th anniversary. Founded in 1833 by Boston's 19th-century Black community on Beacon Hill, it moved to its present site in upper Roxbury in 1939, the last Black church to move out of the Beacon Hill area.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Politics Facts

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