Thomas Atkins

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Thomas Atkins

In 1967 Thomas Atkins became the first Black Bostonian to win a city-wide election to the Boston City Council. He served two two-year terms before losing a campaign for mayor in 1971.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneering Teacher of Reading

Wilhelmina Crosson, one of the first African-American teachers in the Boston Public Schools (1923-1949), started her career at the Hancock School in the North End. Working in the Italian-American community with first-generation Italian children, she instituted the first remedial reading program in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

African-Americans in 1790

There were 766 African-Americans (4 percent of the population) counted in Boston in the first United State Census in 1790.

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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

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

Actor, Playwright, Producer and Drama Teacher

For more than 40 years Vernon F. Blackman was a significant force in the theater. Beginning his stage career with the Little Theater Players, he founded the People's Theater Players, he founded the People's Theater Company of Cambridge and the Theater Company of Boston. From the 1950s until his

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity

In another approach to upgrading education for Boston's Black students, the Metropolitan Council for Education Opportunity ( METCO) was founded in 1966, and 219 Boston students began attending school in seven suburban communities (Newton, Brookline, Wellesley, Lexington, Lincoln, Arlington, and

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Breezy Meadows Camp

On May 1, 1936 the Robert Gould Shaw House bought Breezy Meadows Camp in Holliston, Massachusetts, which provided summer camping for Boston's Black children and youth until the mid 1960s.

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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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Major Foundation Director

Anna Faith Jones became the first African-American woman to head a major American foundation when she was appointed director of The Boston Foundation in 1985. Since her appointment The Boston Foundation has recommitted itself to aid for the disadvantaged.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

George W. Forbes, Librarian

George W. Forbes (1864-1927) served as reference librarian from 1896 to 1927 in the West End Branch of the Boston Public Library, the city's busiest branch at the time. While the West End Beacon Hill neighborhood was a predominantly Black neighborhood during the late 1890's, a Jewish population

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Renowned Voice and Piano Teacher

For over 60 years Rebecca Ellastine Lee Broadnax (1893-1987) was a renowned voice and piano teacher in greater Boston. For teenagers she founded the Cantemus Club in 1934, a group of 24 students who presented concerts and recitals in Boston and throughout New England until 1952. She organized the

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

19th-Century Guitarist

James Gloucester Demarest was a 19th-century musician who taught the guitar and violin in Boston and also composed for these instruments.

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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

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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

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

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

The historic Pioneer Club, a semi-private club owned by Shag and Bal Taylor and a landmark in the history of jazz, was a funky after-hours night spot located in a brick, three-story row house at the end of a short alley off Tremont Street (where the new Douglass Plaza now stands). Socially and

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

National Negro Business League

The National Business League was founded in Boston in 1900 by Booker T. Washington 'to bring the colored people who are engaged in business together for consultation, and to secure information and inspiration from each other.' More than 400 business people from 34 states attended the convention in

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Population in 1970

In 1970, 51 percent of Boston's African-Americans had been born outside of Massachusetts and had migrated to the state, and most of the newcomers (29 percent of the entire Black population) were of southern origin.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Largest Real Estate Business

In the early 20th century Theodore Raymond built up the largest real estate business in the city of Cambridge, with property holdings estimated at about $200,000.

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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

Early Entrepreneur

By 1855 J. H. Lewis, one of the best known clothiers of the period, developed a thriving business making fashionable 'bell trouser' in a large shop on Washington Street in Boston's downtown business district.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Wig Manufacturer

The largest wig manufacturer in Boston in the early 1900s was Gilbert C. Harris. By 1910 his mail-order business was the largest of its kind in New England, supplying theatrical stock companies throughout the country.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Leads Rally - Part 2

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

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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

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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

Lucy Terry Prince (c. 1733-1821), sometimes referred to as America's first Black poet, was a Massachusetts storyteller whose poem 'The Bar's Fight' was written in 1746 while she was still a slave.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Women's Anti-Slavery Organizer

Born in Salem, Sara Remond (1826-1894) was a leading organizer of women for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Protesting segregation in churches, theatres, and other public places, she won a civil court suit after being ejected from the Howard Athenaeum in Boston, which

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Edward L. Cooper, Sr.

In 1933 Edward L. Cooper, Sr., was the first African-American to be hired to manage a major food chain in Boston, the First National Store on Shawmut Avenue. From 1942-48 he was Deputy Secretary of the Urban League and served as Executive Secretary from 1948-54. From 1954-62 he served as the first

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

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