Black History

Honorable George L. Ruffin was born of free parents, George W. and Nancy Lewis Ruffin, in Richmond Virginia, December 16, 1834 Advantages for the education of blacks in Virginia were very limited. His parents, who were very anxious about moral and intellectual development of their children, moved to Boston in 1853 where their family could have the benefit of the schools.

“Long Road to Justice: The African American Experience in the Massachusetts Courts”, an exhibit describing that journey in fresh detail, will be unveiled on Thursday, February 8, at its permanent location in the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse.

Since the black community first coalesced on Beacon Hill in the late 18th century, blacks began a pattern of moving into neighborhoods abandoned by the white gentry. At the time, wealthy whites who had employed blacks as servants on Beacon Hill began moving off the Boston peninsula to outlying communities in the town of Roxbury, where they built country estates.

From the beginning, Boston’s African American community contributed to Freedom’s Journal in vital and significant ways. Published in New York City from 1827 to 1829, Freedom’s Journal was an international outlet for news and opinion pieces by, about and for African Americans. It was distributed in the United States throughout the North and parts of the South, with agents also in Haiti, England and Canada.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech, delivered at the March on Washington, set the tone for the Civil Rights Movement during the turbulent decade of social change.

A listing of key events in the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A star athlete in both high school and college, Harvard-trained attorney Matthew Washington Bullock coached high school and college football, taught at Morehouse College, served as special assistant attorney general for Massachusetts, and became the first black chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Parole and Advisory Board of Pardons.

Throughout North America, the Caribbean and Europe there are freemason’s whose lineage began here in Boston in 1775, when Prince Hall and 14 other freed black men applied secured a charter to join the international association.

With unfailing courtesy and diplomatic tact, Sergeant Horatio Julius Homer, the first African American appointed to the Boston Police Department, served 40 faithful years as police commission guard.

Known as a pioneer in the black women’s club movement, journalist, suffragist and civil rights activist, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin issued the first call for a national convention of African American women and thus laid the groundwork for the eventual formation of the National Association of Colored Women.

City councilors and community members gathered at City Hall last week to honor African American business and civic leaders as part of Black History Month.

Sixty-four years before the Banner began publishing, the Guardian began to record the opinions, struggles and events of black Boston. Its publisher, William Monroe Trotter, stands as one of the preeminent black thinkers of the 20th century.