Roxbury is a neighborhood within the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Anna Louise Day Hicks was an American politician and lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts, best known for her staunch opposition to desegregation in Boston public schools, and especially to court-ordered busing, in the 1960s and 1970s. A longtime member of Boston's school board and city council, she served one term in the United States House of Representatives, succeeding Speaker of the House John W. McCormack.
Dorchester is a neighborhood comprising more than 6 square miles (16 km2) in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester, Dorset, England, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This dissolved municipality, Boston's largest neighborhood by far, is often divided by city planners in order to create two planning areas roughly equivalent in size and population to other Boston neighborhoods.
Richard Mather was a New England Puritan minister in colonial Boston. He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather to Cotton Mather, both celebrated Boston theologians.
Mattapan is a neighborhood in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Historically and for legal processes a section of Dorchester, Mattapan became a part of Boston when Dorchester was annexed in 1870. Mattapan is the original Native American name for the Dorchester area, possibly meaning "a place to sit." At the 2010 census, it had a population of 36,480, with the majority of its population immigrants.
James Joseph Reeb was an American Unitarian Universalist minister, pastor, and activist during the civil rights movement in Washington, D.C., and Boston, Massachusetts. While participating in the Selma to Montgomery marches actions in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, he was murdered by white segregationists and white supremacists, dying of head injuries in the hospital two days after being severely beaten. Three men were tried for Reeb's murder but were acquitted by an all-white jury. His murder remains officially unsolved.
Mildred Fay Jefferson was an American physician and anti-abortion activist. The first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, the first woman to graduate in surgery from Harvard Medical School, and the first woman to become a member of the Boston Surgical Society, she is known for her opposition to the legalization of abortion and her work as president of the National Right to Life Committee.
First Parish in Cambridge is a Unitarian Universalist church, located in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is a Welcoming Congregation and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association. The church is notable for its almost 400-year history, which includes pivotal roles in the development of the early Massachusetts government, the creation of Harvard College, and the refinement of current liberal religious thought.
The W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute, formerly the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, is part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research located at Harvard University. Its main work is in the provision of fellowships to scholars studying a wide variety of topics relating to its central concerns, which are African and African American studies.
First Parish Dorchester is a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Dorchester, Massachusetts. It was founded by English Puritans who initially saw themselves as reformers rather than separatists, but increasingly intolerable conditions in England and at the urging of Reverend John White of Dorchester, Dorset, they emigrated to New England. On March 20, 1630 as they set sail from Plymouth, England on the Mary and John, the congregation wrote its founding church covenant. Nearly all of the 140 ship passengers originated in the West Country counties of Somerset, Dorset and Devon. In late May, the ship landed first at what became called Hull, Massachusetts, and then in June at a place called "Mattapan" by the indigenous people including the Massachusett and Wampanoag. The Puritans named their new home "Dorchester Plantation."
The GTA Faith Alliance is a multi-faith charitable organization which works to create educational and employment opportunities to divert at-risk youth from gangs and crime. The alliance was founded in February 2003 as a joint effort of approximately 40 religious leaders focussing on the issue of youth violence, particularly involving gangs and guns. It received charitable status from the Canada Revenue Agency in 2009.
First Church in Boston is a Unitarian Universalist Church founded in 1630 by John Winthrop's original Puritan settlement in Boston, Massachusetts. The current building, located on 66 Marlborough Street in the Back Bay neighborhood, was designed by Paul Rudolph in a modernist style after a fire in 1968. It incorporates part of the earlier gothic revival building designed by William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt in 1867. The church has long been associated with Harvard University.
Hyde Park High School was a four-year public high school that served students in ninth through twelfth grades in the Boston neighborhood of Hyde Park, Massachusetts, United States. The school held its first classes in 1869, one year after the founding of the town of Hyde Park. The school was located at 655 Metropolitan Avenue from 1928 until its closure in 2005.
Reverend Ichabod Wiswall (1637–1700) was the third pastor of the church in Duxbury, Plymouth Colony, British America. Though he is thought to have given the first known funeral sermon in British America at the burial of Capt. Jonathan Alden in 1697, American funeral sermons predate this event by several decades.
Thomas Paul (1773–1831) was a Baptist minister in Boston, Massachusetts, who became the first pastor for the First African Baptist Church, currently known as the African Meeting House. He later helped found the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City. An abolitionist, he was a leader in the black community and was an active missionary in Haiti.
John James Smith was a barber shop owner, abolitionist, a three-term Massachusetts state representative, and one of the first African-American members of the Boston Common Council. A Republican, he served three terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He was born in Richmond Virginia. He took part in the California Gold Rush.
Eugene S. Callender was an American pastor and activist in the civil rights movement.
Willie Beatrice Barrow was an American civil rights activist and minister. Barrow was the co-founder of Operation PUSH, which was named Operation Breadbasket at the time of its creation alongside Rev. Jesse Jackson. In 1984, Barrow became the first woman executive director of a civil rights organization, serving as Push's CEO. Barrow was the godmother of President Barack Obama.
Until 1950, African Americans were a small but historically important minority in Boston, where the population was majority white. Since then, Boston's demographics have changed due to factors such as immigration, white flight, and gentrification. According to census information for 2010–2014, an estimated 180,657 people in Boston are Black/African American, either alone or in combination with another race. Despite being in the minority, and despite having faced housing, educational, and other discrimination, African Americans in Boston have made significant contributions in the arts, politics, and business since colonial times.
Meeting House Hill is one of the oldest sections of Boston's historic Dorchester neighborhood. It is the site of the First Parish Church and the Mather School, the oldest public elementary school in North America. Located immediately to the north of Fields Corner, it is within walking distance of the Fields Corner and Savin Hill MBTA stations.
