Successful Housing Development

BlackFacts Details

Successful Housing Development

The Lower Roxbury Community Corporation under the leadership of Ralph D. Smith, between 1972 and 1980, developed housing for the elderly and low-income residents and townhouses with 570 housing units. Organized 1966, LRCC was the first neighborhood group to initiate and develop housing in the country. Ralph D. Smith was named the American Society of Planning Officials ( ASPO) Planner of the Year in 1974. The ASPO honored him 'for leading and validating a neighborhood voice, for initiating plans and implementing techniques to upgrade the inner city environment, and for making the decision process work better,' through the Lower Roxbury Community Corporation.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early State Representatives

The 19th-century African-American state representatives were: Edwin G. Walker, 1866 Charles L. Mitchell, 1866 John J. Smith, 1868, 1869, 1872 George L. Ruffin, 1870, 1871 Joshua B. Smith, 1873, 1874 George W. Lowther, 1878, 1879 Julius C. Chappelle, 1883-86 William O. Armstrong, 1887, 1888 Andrew

fave

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

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Teacher

The first Black teacher in the Boston Public Schools is believed to have been Harriet L. Smith, who taught from 1890 (at the Sharp School on Beacon Hill) to 1917 (at the Bowdoin School on Beacon Hill). Her sister, Elizabeth N. Smith, taught from 1894-1896. Other Black teachers during early 1900s

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Female Intelligence Society

The African-American Female Intelligence Society was established in 1832 as both a literary and a mutual-aid group. The Society sponsored lectures 'to become a moral force in the community' and offered health insurance for its members.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

World's Record Holder

Edward 'Ned' Gourdin (1897-1966), as a Harvard athlete, set a new world's record in the running broad jump - 25 feet, 3 inches - the first human to leap beyond 25 feet. A graduate of Cambridge Latin High and Harvard Law School (1924) he was crowned National Amateur Athletic Union Junior 100-yard

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Knights of Pythias

The Knights of Pythias was a fraternal and benevolent order in Boston's small and growing Black community in lower Roxbury that provided effective health insurance and death benefits to widows and orphans. Anchored in its own building at the corner of Ruggles and Washington Streets, it helped

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Newspaper

Boston's first Black newspaper of record before the Civil War was the Emancipator and Free American, founded in 1842 and closed in 1844.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

NAACP Youth Council

Organized with 58 members from 25 different community youth groups and churches in 1936, the Boston Youth Council of NAACP held a mass meeting a year later protesting educational inequality in the Boston schools.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

State Housing Board First

In 1959 Frank Morris became the first African-American senior manager of a state agency in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts when he was appointed to the position of director of the State Housing Board. Starting as a junior planner with the Board in 1948, Frank Morris had one of the

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dual Political Roles

Two African-American women have held simultaneously two elected political offices. Sandra Graham of Cambridge served as City Councilor in her city from 1971 to 1989 and served as a state representative in the Massachusetts legislature from 1977 to 1988. Shirley Owens-Hicks, while serving on the

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Female Olympic Star

During the early 1930s Louise Stokes of Medford was among the finest female track stars in the country. She was a member of the U.S. Olympic Team in 1932 and won the Women's National A.A.U. 50-yard dash championship in Chicago in 1933.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Neighborhoods 1920-1960

For the first half of the 20th century the entire South End and lower Roxbury community became the traditional and historic Black section of Boston. Until 1950 most Blacks resided in narrow geographic strip bounded by Columbus Avenue and Washington Street and Dartmouth Street and what is now New

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Leading Dentist

Dr. W. Alexander Cox had a large dental practice among Black and white patients in Cambridge during the early 1900s. He was the founder and president of the dental section of the National Medical Association. In the late 1800s Dr. Cox was owner and publisher of the Advocate, the only newspaper

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

South End Physician

Dr. John B. Hall, Sr., served as the secretary of the South End Medical Society (a group of white physicians) from its beginning in 1926 until 1952. During his career as a prominent South End physician, Dr. Hall held posts as medical examiner for the Massachusetts Insurance Department and with the

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Prominent New Bedford Lawyer

Emmanuel Sullavou was a prominent lawyer in New Bedford in the late 1800s. Having graduated from Harvard in 1871, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1875. He served on the New Bedford City Council and as a clerk of the district court.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Allan Rohan Crite

Allan Rohan Crite (1910 - ) is Boston's most distinguished Black artist and art historian, noted for an eclectic range of subjects - from religious themes to neighborhood scenes. His religious artwork can be seen in the Church of St. Augustine and St. Martin on Lenox Street in lower Roxbury. His

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Court Child Care Center

The Roxbury District Court Child Care Center was the first court-affiliated drop-in care center in New England for families who must bring their children with them when they have court business. Roxbury District Court Judge Julian T. Houston, now a Superior Court judge, worked for four years to

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Black Neighborhood

Between 1800 and 1900 most of Boston's African American residents lived in the West End, between Pinckney and Cambridge Streets and between Joy and Charles Streets - a neighborhood now called the north slope of Beacon Hill.

fave

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.

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

Creating Political Opportunities

In 1986 the Black Political Task Force joined forces with the Rainbow Coalition, the Massachusetts Latino Democratic Committee, and the Asian Political Caucus to challenge the redistricting plan put forth by the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Redistricting is the process by which

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Charles Lenox Remond

Charles Lenox Remond (1810-1873) was perhaps the boldest agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and possibly the most eloquent of the Black abolitionists of antebellum Boston. He had a national and international reputation as an anti-slavery leader, and was appointed as an American

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Aswalos House, a satellite of Boston's YWCA at the corner of Maple and Seaver Streets in upper Roxbury, was opened in the Black community in 1968 and has continuously provided educational, social, and recreational services for young girls and women for over 20 years.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Political Writer

Hailed as America's first Black political writer, Maria W. Stewart, an early Boston activist, championed women's rights and Black self-improvement in a series of speeches and essays written between 1831 and 1833. She was probably the first Black American to lecture publicly in defense of

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

Advocate for Community Development

Charles 'Chuck' Turner, executive director of the Center for Community Action, has been a community organizer, activist, and advocate for Boston's African-American community for over 20 years. He has a record of effectively organizing people to confront city and state agencies for jobs, affordable

fave

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.

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

Education Facts

Lifestyle Facts

Arts Facts

Blackfacts BETA RELEASE 11.5.3
(Production Environment)