Oldest Funeral Home

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Oldest Funeral Home

The J. B. Johnson Funeral Home, established in 1932, and the Davis Funeral Home, established in 1935 - both still in business - are two of the oldest continuously performing establishments providing services to Black families in Boston.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Deputy Tax Collector

Stewart E. Hoyt, who started as a clerk in the Boston tax collector's office, rose to the position of Deputy Tax Collector for the City in the 1920s, retiring in 1931.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Early Childhood Educator

Lucy M. Mitchell became the first African-American elected to the Board of Directors of the Boston YWCA in 1941, where she served for seven years. Previously, in the mid-1930s she pioneered the development of a model nursery school at the Robert Gould Shaw House and led efforts to improve and

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Black Businesses in 1846

Nearly 200 of Boston's 800 black residents operated businesses in 1846.

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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

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

First Abolitionist Group

When a group of Black Bostonians founded the Massachusetts General Colored Association in 1826 to fight for an end to slavery, they became Boston's primary abolition organization.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

'Dean' of Black Lawyers

Henry E. Quarles, Sr., born in Boston in 1906, and a graduate of Suffolk Law School in 1928, is considered 'The Dean' of Black lawyers in Boston. He holds the distinction of having the longest legal career - 61 years of practice as an attorney - in Boston. He received an Honorary Doctor of Law from

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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

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

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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

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

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

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

First Graduate, New England Conservatory of Music

Rachel M. Washington was the first African-American to graduate from the New England Conservatory of Music in the year 1876. She served as organist and choir director at Twelfth Baptist Church in the latter half of the 19th century and was a leading music teacher in Boston's Black community.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Sergeant William E. Carter (1858-1918), for whom the Carter Playground in Boston's South End is named, served in the Spanish-American War, the Massachusetts National Guard from 1899 to 1917, and in World War I, where he was killed in action in October 1918.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Operation Exodus

Ellen Swepson Jackson was founder and executive director of Operation Exodus, a privately initiated inner-city busing program that began in 1965 to help Black students living near substandard schools to attend 'better' schools in other generally all-white neighborhoods in Boston.

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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

Boston Guardian

The Boston Guardian newspaper, a major 20th-century civil rights publication, was founded in Boston in 1901 by William Monroe Trotter, who published the newspaper until his death in 1934. For the next 23 years (1934 - 1957), Trotter's sister, Maude Trotter Steward, and her husband, Dr. Charles

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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.

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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

John B. Cruz Construction Company

The John B. Cruz Construction Co., established in Boston in 1945, has expanded into one of the largest minority-owned construction firms in the U.S. This family-owned and operated business has constructed both housing and commercial complexes to revitalize Boston's Black neighborhoods.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First U.S. Senator since Reconstruction

In 1962 Edward W. Brooke, a Boston attorney, became the first African-American to be elected Attorney General for the Commonwealth. Two year later, in 1964, he became the first African-American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.

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Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

First Black Lawyer before Supreme Court

John Sweat Rock (1825-1866), a noted Boston lawyer, became in 1865 the first African-American to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court and the first Black person to speak before the U.S. House of Representatives.

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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

Pioneering Public Servant

Clarence Richard Elam (1923-1985) performed as a pioneering public servant as Assistant Director of Civil Defense for the City of Boston form 1950-52, Executive Secretary of the Governor's Council (1952-56), Chairman of the Boston Licensing Board (1956-74), and Special Assistant to Attorney General

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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

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

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

Eminent Foreign Correspondent

William Worthy, Jr., born in Boston in 1921 and educated in its public schools, served as an eminent and significant foreign correspondent and columnist for the Baltimore Afro-American from 1951 to 1980; as a special CBS News correspondent in China, Africa, and the Soviet Union between 1955-57; and

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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

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