Early America In 1638, a number of African Americans arrived in Boston as slaves on the ship
Desiré from
New Providence Island in
the Bahamas. They were the first black people in Boston on record; others may have arrived earlier. The first black landowner in Boston was a man named Bostian Ken, who purchased a house and four acres in
Dorchester in 1656. (Dorchester was annexed to Boston in 1870). A former slave, Ken bought his own freedom, but was not necessarily a
freeman with the right to vote. For humanitarian reasons he mortgaged his house and land to free another slave, making him technically the first African American to "purchase" a slave.
Zipporah Potter Atkins bought land in 1670, on the edge of what is now the
North End. A small community of free African Americans lived at the base of Copp's Hill from the 17th to the 19th century. Members of this community were buried in the
Copp's Hill Burying Ground, where a few remaining headstones can still be seen today. The community was served by the
First Baptist Church. In 1720, an estimated 2,000 African Americans lived in Boston. In 1767, the 15-year-old
Phillis Wheatley published her first poem, "On Messrs. Hussey and Coffin", in the
Newport Mercury. It was the first poem published in the Colonies by an African American. Wheatley was a slave from
Senegal who lived in the home of Susanna Wheatley on
King Street. Wheatley is featured, along with
Abigail Adams and
Lucy Stone, in the
Boston Women's Memorial, a 2003 sculpture on
Commonwealth Avenue. The first casualty of the
American Revolutionary War was a man of African and Wampanoag descent,
Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the
Boston Massacre in 1770. Historians disagree on whether Attucks was a free man or an escaped slave. Slavery was abolished in Massachusetts in 1781, mostly out of gratitude for
black participation in the Revolutionary War. Subsequently, a sizable community of free blacks and escaped slaves developed in Boston. Black Bostonians who fought in the Revolutionary War include
Primus Hall,
Barzillai Lew, and
George Middleton, among others. The
Bunker Hill Monument in
Charlestown marks the site of the
Battle of Bunker Hill, in which a number of African Americans fought, including
Peter Salem,
Salem Poor, and
Seymour Burr.
Abolitionism Boston was a hotbed of the
abolitionist movement. In the 19th century, many African-American abolitionists lived in the
West End and on the north slope of
Beacon Hill, including
John P. Coburn,
Lewis Hayden,
David Walker, and
Eliza Ann Gardner (see
Notable African Americans from Boston). Boston was home to several abolitionist organizations such as the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, whose lecturers included
Frederick Douglass and
William Wells Brown, and the
Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, whose members included the noted author
Susan Paul. Abolitionists held meetings in the
African Meeting House on Beacon Hill. The
Twelfth Baptist Church, led by abolitionist Rev.
Leonard Grimes, was also known as "The Fugitive Slave Church." Several slave rescue riots took place in Boston. In 1836, Eliza Small and Polly Ann Bates, two escaped slaves from Baltimore, were arrested in Boston and brought before Chief Justice
Lemuel Shaw. The judge ordered them freed because of a problem with the arrest warrant. When the agent for the slaveholder requested a new warrant, a group of spectators
rioted in the courtroom and rescued Small and Bates. Controversy over the fate of
George Latimer led to the passage of the 1843 Liberty Act, which prohibited the arrest of fugitive slaves in Massachusetts. Abolitionists rose to the defense of
Ellen and William Craft in 1850,
Shadrach Minkins in 1851, and
Anthony Burns in 1854. An attempt to rescue
Thomas Sims in 1852 was unsuccessful. The regiment trained at
Camp Meigs in
Readville. Boston's
Black Heritage Trail stops at the African Meeting House and other sites on Beacon Hill pertinent to black history before the Civil War. The
Boston Women's Heritage Trail also celebrates women from this period such as
Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African-American woman physician, the poet
Phyllis Wheatley, and abolitionist
Harriet Tubman, who was a frequent visitor to Boston.
Harriet Tubman Park, at Columbus Avenue and Pembroke Street, features a memorial sculpture by
Fern Cunningham.
Late 19th century After the Civil War, the West End continued to be an important center of African-American culture. It was one of the few locations in the United States at the time where African Americans had a political voice. At least one black resident from the West End sat on Boston's community council during every year between 1876 and 1895. The
Boston Police Department appointed
Horatio J. Homer, its first African-American officer, in 1878. Sgt. Homer spent 40 years on the police force. A plaque in his honor hangs at the Area B-2 police precinct in
Roxbury. In 1895, the
First National Conference of the Colored Women of America was held in Boston.
Early 20th century '', February 1901 According to historian Daniel M. Scott III, "Boston played a major role in black cultural expression before, during, and after" the
Harlem Renaissance. Political writers and activists such as
William Monroe Trotter,
William Henry Lewis,
William H. Ferris,
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin,
Angelina Weld Grimké,
Maria Louise Baldwin, and
George Washington Forbes extended Boston's tradition of black activism into the 20th century. Boston by that time had an educated black elite—sometimes referred to as Black Brahmins, after the
Boston Brahmins—who laid a social and political foundation for insistence on racial equality. She also founded the
Woman's Era Club, the first club for African American women in Boston. In theater, Ralf Coleman's Negro Repertory Theater earned him the unofficial title of "Dean of Boston Black Theater". In dance, Stanley E. Brown,
Mildred Davenport, and
Jimmy Slyde earned national acclaim. In the visual arts,
Allan Crite was one of the most influential painters in Boston. and attracted the interest of writers in New York. Another noted Boston writer of Johnson's generation was the poet
William Waring Cuney, whose 1926 poem "No Images" was later used by jazz artist
Nina Simone on her 1966 album
Let It All Out. The first chartered branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (
NAACP) was founded in Boston in March 1911.
Civil rights "Although popular and scholarly attention has been paid to the struggle for equality in other parts of the country during the twentieth century, Boston's civil rights history has largely been ignored", according to organizers of a symposium at the Kennedy Library in 2006. Although Boston's civil rights movement is usually associated with the busing controversy of the 1970s and 1980s, Bostonians such as
Melnea Cass and
James Breeden were active in the civil rights movement before then. In 1963, 8,000 people marched through
Roxbury to protest "
systemic segregation" in Boston's public schools. In April 1965,
Martin Luther King Jr. led a march from Roxbury to Boston Common to protest school segregation. That June, after the 114 day Freedom Vigil of Rev.
Vernon Carter of All Saints Lutheran Church in the South End, which began two weeks after Martin Luther king's Boston march, the Massachusetts legislature passed the Racial Imbalance Act signed by Governor Volpe, which ordered the state's public schools to desegregate. On April 5, 1968, hoping to ease racial tensions following King's assassination, Mayor
Kevin White asked
James Brown not to cancel a scheduled concert at
Boston Garden. He persuaded
WGBH-TV to televise the concert so that people would stay home to watch it. The next day, nearly 5,000 people attended a rally organized by the
Black United Front in
White Stadium. Protesters presented a list of demands that included "the transfer of the ownership of ... [white-owned] businesses to the black community, ... every school in the black community shall have all-black staff ... [and] control of all public, private, and municipal agencies that affect the lives of the people in this community." After
Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated,
Mel King, then the executive director of the New Urban League, wrote: We may voice our outrage at certain kinds of violence. We may implement some type of gun-control legislation, but until we confront ourselves, examine and readjust our priorities, make a firm commitment to change, and act on that commitment, we are deceiving ourselves and perpetuating a system which will lead to the ultimate form of violence—the destruction of society. That September, 500 African-American students walked out of school after a student was sent home from
English High School for wearing a
dashiki. Later that year, Mel King and the New Urban League protested at a
United Way luncheon, charging that Boston's African-American community was receiving only "crumbs".
Busing The desegregation of Boston public schools (1974–1988) was a period in which the
Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through a system of busing students. The call for desegregation and the first years of its implementation led to a series of racial protests and riots that brought national attention, particularly from 1974 to 1976. In response to the Massachusetts legislature's enactment of the 1965 Racial Imbalance Act, which ordered the state's public schools to desegregate,
W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of the
United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts laid out a plan for
compulsory busing of students between predominantly white and black areas of the city. The court control of the desegregation plan lasted for over a decade. It influenced Boston politics and contributed to demographic shifts of Boston's school-age population, leading to a decline of public-school enrollment and
white flight to the suburbs. Full control of the desegregation plan was transferred to the Boston School Committee in 1988; in 2013 the busing system was replaced by one with dramatically reduced busing.
Late 20th century ,
Callie Crossley, Philip Martin, and
Kim McLarin) The
National Center of Afro-American Artists (NCAAA) was founded by
Elma Lewis in 1968 in
Roxbury, Boston. In 1968,
WGBH-TV began airing
Say Brother (later renamed
Basic Black), Boston's longest running public affairs program produced by, for and about African Americans. In 1972, Sheridan Broadcasting purchased the
WILD (AM) radio station, making it the only urban, contemporary music radio station in the country owned and operated by a black-owned company. Rabbi Gerald Zelermyer of
Mattapan was attacked on June 27, 1969, by two black youths who came to his door, handed him a note telling him to "lead the Jewish racists out of Mattapan" and threw acid in his face. He was severely burned but not permanently disfigured. Two Mattapan synagogues were burned down by arsonists in 1970. By 1980, nearly all of the Jews who had lived on Blue Hill Avenue had relocated. The
Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts gave its first annual performance of the
Black Nativity at the school in 1970. It has been performed at various venues since then, including the
Boston Opera House. Its new home is the
Paramount Theatre. In 1972, the Museum of African American History purchased the
African Meeting House, in Boston's Beacon Hill. From 1974 to 1980, the
Combahee River Collective, a political organizing group largely composed of Black lesbian socialists, met in Boston and nearby suburbs. The Collective is perhaps best remembered for developing the Combahee River Collective Statement, a foundational text for
identity politics and an important Black feminist text. In 1978, the Boston branch of the
NAACP successfully sued the
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for allowing the
Boston Housing Authority to discriminate based on race. Housing discrimination in Boston remained an issue; in 1989 the
Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reported that residents of Boston's black neighborhoods were less likely to receive home mortgages than residents of white neighborhoods, "even after taking into account economic and nonracial characteristics that could be responsible for differences between these neighborhoods". As a gesture of protest over inadequate city services, a group of activists obtained enough signatures to put a non-binding
referendum on the November 1986 ballot, proposing that the predominantly black neighborhoods of Boston secede and create a new city called
Mandela. Voters in those neighborhoods rejected the proposal by a 3-to-1 margin. In 1989,
Charles Stuart murdered his pregnant wife to collect life insurance and told Boston police she had been killed by a black gunman. The case exacerbated racial tensions in Boston for a time.
Nelson Mandela and his wife
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela visited Boston on June 23, 1990.
George Walker's
Lilacs, for Voice and Orchestra was premiered by the
Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1996 with
Seiji Ozawa conducting. The piece earned Walker a
Pulitzer Prize for Music, making him the first African-American composer to be awarded the prize. Many black Boston natives have moved to the suburbs or to Southern cities such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Dallas, Houston, Memphis, San Antonio and Jacksonville.
21st century In 2009,
Ayanna Pressley became the first Black woman, and first woman of color, elected to the
Boston City Council, in its 140 year history. She won a city-wide At-Large seat. In 2018, she was elected to the House of Representatives, and became the first woman of color to represent Massachusetts in Congress. In 2021,
Kim Janey became the first African-American
mayor of Boston, having succeeded
Marty Walsh following his confirmation as the
United States Secretary of Labor. ==Popular culture== When founder
Joseph L. Walcott opened
Wally’s Paradise in
Boston's South End neighbourhood in 1947, he was the first African American nightclub owner in
New England. It is recognized as one of Boston’s oldest and longest-operating
jazz clubs. which honors 69 civil rights and social justice leaders active in Boston from the 1950s through the 1970s. •
Donna Summer •
Blue Hill Avenue, 2001 film •
New Edition ==Demographics==