Major Foundation Director

BlackFacts Details

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.

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dimock Community Health Center

Dimock Community Health Center in the Roxbury section of Boston is the oldest health facility in the city oriented to the care of Black and low income people. Founded in 1863 as the New England Hospital for Woman and Children to provide medical training for white women, the hospital also included

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Outstanding Criminal Lawyer

William H. Lewis (1869-1949), long recognized as one of Boston's outstanding criminal lawyers, was the first African-American to hold the position of Assistant United States Attorney General, appointed by President Taft in 1911.

fave

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.

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

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

fave

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

fave

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.

fave

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

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Pioneering Black Historian

William C. Nell of Boston, an early writer-reporter for the Liberator, was also a pioneering Black historian, havingwritten Services of the Colored Americans in the Wars 1776 and 1812 (1852) andThe Colored Patriots of the American Revolution with Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons to

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Correction Department First

John Boone served as Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Correction from 1972 to August 1973. He was the first (and only) African-American to hold this position in the 74-year history of the Department.

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Founder of Equal Rights Newspaper

J. Gordon Street was a journalist for three of Boston's white newspapers in the 1880s: theBoston Beacon, theBoston Evening Record, andThe Boston Herald. Critical of the white American press' neglect of discrimination faced by Blacks in the late 19th century, he established a Black newspaper, The

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

In 1975 Angela Paige Cook with her husband Joseph Cook founded Paige Academy in the Highland Park section of Roxbury. The academy has become a nationally recognized private pre-school and elementary school with the arts and sciences as vital components of the curriculum. As a unique community

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Served General Washington

Barzillai Lew of Cambridge, who had been a member of the Massachusetts fighting unit during the French and Indian War of 1760, was one of the full seven-year veterans of the American Revolution. He directly served General George Washington and later headed an all-Black unit in Rhode Island during

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Brighton High Valedictorian

In 1911 an African-American girl, F. Marion Reed, was valedictorian of her class at Brighton High School. With an overall average of 95 for her four years of high school study, she was in the top ten of academically achieving students out of 1,291 graduates from Boston high schools in 1911.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Theological School President

Rev. David T. Shannon became the first African-American to head the 184-year old Andover Newton Theological School in Newton in 1991. This school is the nation's oldest Protestant graduate school of theology.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

TV Executive First

When Donna Latson Gittens was named vice president of community programming for WCVB-TV in 1983, she became the first African-American in the history of local television to assume this executive position and one of a relatively few in the nation.

fave

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.

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Chancellor of Higher Education

Dr. Franklyn Jenifer was appointed Chancellor of Higher Education in Massachusetts in 1986 by Governor Michael Dukakis, becoming the first African-American to hold this position. In 1990 he became president of Howard University in Washington, D.C.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Dr. John B. Hall, Jr.

Dr. John B. Hall, Jr., became the first Black doctor accepted as an intern at Boston City Hospital in 1931.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Medical Director

In 1949 Dr. Charles D. Bonner (1917-1990) became the first Black physician appointed to the staff at Boston City Hospital. In 1968 he was appointed Medical Director of Youville Hospital in Cambridge. In 1979 he was elected president of the Massachusetts Heart Association. Dr. Bonner gained national

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Trailblazing Dancer

Born in Roxbury in 1900, Mildred Davenport became a trailblazing dancer and renowned dance instructor. Her first career was in show business. In 1938 she danced her interpretation of the African-American spirituals with the Boston Pops. She appeared on Broadway with such reviews as 'Blackbirds' and

fave

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.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Top Position for 'Colored Man'

Attorney E. E. Brown was appointed Assistant Health Commisioner for the city of Boston in 1907 by Mayor Fitzgerald, a Democrat. The Guardian newspaper called Brown's appointment the 'best position any colored man ever had in Boston.' The newspaper went on to say, 'The appointment of a colored man

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

Early Cambridge City Councilors

Four African-Americans served on the Cambridge City Council in the 1800s: J. Milton Clark, 1873; William Stevenson, 1882-83; W. C. Lane, 1883-84; Louis E. Baldwin, 1891-95.

fave

Source: African Americans in Boston: More Than 350 Years

Nation of Islam Leader

Minister Louis Farrakhan, raised in Roxbury and a 1950 graduate of English High School, has been the national leader of the Nation of Islam since 1977, following the death of the founder of the Nation, Elijah Muhammad. While viewed by some as controversial, Minister Farrakhan and the Nation of

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

Arts Facts

Blackfacts BETA RELEASE 11.5.3
(Production Environment)