Celebrating Black History Month
HEROES IN HISTORY
Bruce Carlton Bolling -- Politician
April 29, 1945 – September 11, 2012
Bruce Carlton Bolling was born on April 29, 1945, the son of Royal L. Bolling, a state senator of Massachusetts who sponsored an act which made segregation of public schools illegal. Bruce graduated from Boston English High School. From there, he attended Northeastern University and
later received a Master’s degree in education from Antioch University (now Cambridge College).
In 1981, Bruce was elected to the Boston City Council. He became Council President in 1986 and 1987, becoming the first Black person to be elected Council President. During his time on the Council, he pushed developers to build more affordable housing and hire more people of color and women. Bruce was a strong proponent of the Boston Linkage Ordinance, which requires developers to contribute to economic and community development benefits for the residents of Boston. Bruce also pushed forward the Fair Housing Commission and pushed forward legislation on the Boston Residents Jobs Policy. In 1993, Bruce ran for Mayor of Boston.
From 2000 through his passing in 2012, he was the Director of MassAlliance. In 2015, the Ferdinand building in Roxbury was renamed the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building in his honor.
Birth Date: April 29, 1945
Death Date: September 11, 2012
Occupation: Politician
Melnea Agnes Cass -- Social Activist
June 16, 1896 – December 16, 1978
Melnea Agnes Cass (June 16, 1896 – December 16, 1978) was an American community and civil rights activist. She was deeply involved in many community projects and volunteer groups in the South End and Roxbury neighborhoods of Boston and helped found the Boston local of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
From 1962 to 1964, she served as the President of the Boston NAACP and organized demonstrations against segregation in the Boston Public Schools. From 1975 to 1976, Melnea Cass was chair of the Massachusetts Advisory Committee for the Elderly. Melnea Cass Boulevard in Lower Roxbury is named after Ms. Cass. She was relentless in her pursuit of educational and economic opportunities and racial justice for her community. Known as the “First Lady of Roxbury,” Melnea Cass’ activities ranged from volunteering on committees, serving on boards, accepting city-appointed commissions, and giving money to students who graduated from school.
Birth Date: June 16, 1896
Death Date: December 16, 1978
Occupation: Social Activist
Elma Ina Lewis -- Arts educator, Activist
September 15, 1921 – January 1, 2004
Museum chief executive Elma Lewis was born in Boston on September 15, 1921, to immigrant parents from the West Indies. Lewis devoted a lifetime to bringing culture into the lives of Boston’s African American community. Lewis attended public schools in Boston and went to Emerson College to earn a B.A. in 1943. She received an M.Ed. from Boston University in 1944.
After completing her education, Lewis taught dance, drama, and speech therapy, and in 1950 she founded the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts. The school was established to meet the cultural and artistic needs of the African American community in Boston. Lewis developed a comprehensive program teaching dance, drama, art, music, and costume design. Twenty-five students enrolled on the first day of school. In 1966, Lewis founded Playhouse in the Park, a summer theater program that featured performers such as Duke Ellington. Two years later, Lewis founded the National Center of Afro-American Artists, an umbrella organization that included the school, jazz and classical orchestras, a chorus, a dance troupe and a museum.
In 1981, Lewis was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her dedicated work in the arts, and in 1983 President Ronald Reagan presented her the Presidential Medal for the Arts. Although the Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts closed in 1990, many of Lewis’ pupils have gone on to well-established careers in entertainment while others have opened up schools of their own. Lewis continues to be active with the NCAAA and is active with a number of other organizations as well. She is a trustee and life member of the PBS station, WGBH, having been involved with it for forty years. She was also an active member of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for forty years as well as a trustee of the Massachusetts College of Art. Lewis has received more than 400 awards in her lifetime and twenty-eight honorary degrees.
Birth Date: September 15, 1921
Death Date: January 1, 2004
Occupation: Arts educator, Activist
Rebecca Lee Crumpler - First African American Female Physician
(1831-1895)
Rebecca Lee Crumpler was born Rebecca Davis, in Delaware on February 8, 1831. she was extremely bright, and attended the prestigious private school, the West-Newton English and classical school in Massachusetts as a “special student”. In 1852, she moved to Charleston Massachusetts, where she worked as a nurse. later, in 1860, Rebecca applied to medical school and was accepted to the new England female medical college, based in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 1864, Rebecca became the new England female medical college’s only African-American graduate. consideration of the following statistics, further highlight her remarkable accomplishment. In 1860, there were only 300 women out of 54,543 physicians in the United States and none of them were African-American. additionally, as late as 1920, there were only 65 African-American women doctors in the united states. thus, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler’s accomplishment of becoming the first female African-American doctor is a tremendous achievement to be celebrated and remembered.
Birth Date: February 08, 1831
Death Date: March 9, 1885
Occupation: Physician
Madam C.J. Walker – Inventor
(1867 – 1919)
Madam C.J. Walker invented a line of African American hair products after suffering from a scalp ailment that resulted in her own hair loss. She promoted her products by traveling around the country giving lecture-demonstrations and eventually established Madame C.J. Walker Laboratories to manufacture cosmetics and train beauticians.
Her business acumen led her to be one of the first American women to become a millionaire. She was also known for her philanthropic endeavors, including a donation toward the construction of an Indianapolis YMCA in 1913. As a civil rights activist, in 1917, Madam C.J. Walker was part of a delegation to petition President Woodrow Wilson to make lynching a federal crime. Walker’s life was portrayed in the 2020 TV show Self Made, with Octavia Spencer portraying Walker.
Birth Date: December 23, 1867
Death Date: May 25, 1919
Invention: Hair Products for African Americans
George Washington Carver
(1864 – 1943)
George Washington Carver was born enslaved and went on to become one of the most prominent scientists and inventors of his time, as well as teacher at the Tuskegee Institute. Carver devised over 100 products using one major crop – the peanut – including dyes, plastics and gasoline. Carver’s inventions, using the peanut made him known as the Peanut Man.
Carver as the first black student at Iowa State excelled in his studies. Upon completion of his Bachelors of Science degree, Carver’s professors persuaded him to stay on for a Master’s degree. His graduate studies included intensive work on plant pathology at the Iowa Experiment Station. In those years, Carver established his reputation as a brilliant botanist and began the work that he would pursue the remainder of his career.
After Carver graduated from Iowa State, he embarked on a career of teaching and research. Booker T. Washington, the founder of the historically Black Tuskegee Institute, hired Carver to run the school’s agricultural department in 1896. The agricultural department at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) achieved national renown under Carver’s leadership, with a curriculum and a faculty that he shaped. Carver’s work at the helm of the Tuskegee Institute’s agricultural department included groundbreaking research on plant biology, much of which focused on the development of new uses for corps including peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans and pecans.
Carver was also recognized abroad for his scientific expertise. In 1916, he was made a member of the British Royal Society of Arts – a rare honor for an American. Carver also advised Mahatma Gandhi on matters of agriculture and nutrition.
Carver died after falling down the stairs at his home on January 5, 1943, at the age of 78. He was buried next to Booker T. Washington on the Tuskegee grounds. Carver’s epitaph reads: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”
Birth Date: January, 1864, Diamond Missouri
Death Date: January 5, 1943, Tuskegee, Alabama
Inventor, scientist and educator
Alice Augusta Ball
(1892 – 1916)
Alice Augusta Ball was the first woman to graduate from the College of Hawaii (now the University of Hawaii) in 1915 with a master’s degree in science (chemistry). She was the first African American research chemist and instructor in the college’s chemistry department. Alice was also the first person to successfully develop a water-soluble, injectable form of chaulmoogra oil that was used for decades to relieve the symptoms of Hansen’s disease (leprosy).
Alice graduated from Seattle High School in 1910. After graduation, she spent four years at the University of Washington and earned two degrees: pharmaceutical chemistry (1912) and pharmacy (1914). She moved to Hawaii to attend graduate school at the University of Hawaii. While she was working on her master’s thesis, The Chemical Constituents of the Active Principle of the Ava Root, Dr. Hollmann, Assistant Surgeon at Kalihi Hospital in Hawaii where new Hansen’s disease patients were sent, asked Alice Ball to help him isolate the active agents in chaulmoogra oil. In a short period of time, she accomplished what many researchers, chemists, and pharmacologists working around the world for hundreds of years had not been able to do. Sadly, Alice never lived to witness the results of her discovery. On December 31, 1916, she died at the age of twenty-four.
In 1918 an article in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that 78 patients of Kalihi Hospital were released by board of health examiners after being treated by chaulmoogra injections. On February 29, 2000, the Governor of Hawaii issued a proclamation, declaring it “Alice Ball Day.” On the same day the University of Hawaii recognized its first woman graduate and pioneering chemist with a bronze plaque mounted at the base of the lone chaulmoogra tree on campus. In January 2007 the Board of Regents of the University of Hawaii honored Alice’s work and memory with its highest award: the Regents Medal of Distinction.
Birth Date: July 24, 1892, Seattle Washington
Death Date: December 31, 1916, Seattle Washington
Occupation: Chemist
Thurgood Marshall U.S. - Supreme Court Justice
(1908 – 1993)
Born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, Thurgood Marshall was the grandson of a slave. His father, William Marshall instilled in him from youth an appreciation for the United States Constitution and the rule of law. In 1930, he applied to the University of Maryland Law School, but was denied admission because he was black. This was an event that was to haunt him and direct his future professional life. That same year Thurgood sought admission and was accepted at the Howard University Law School.
After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In this capacity, he wrote more than 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. None of his 98 majority decisions was ever reversed by the Supreme Court. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.
Until his retirement from the highest court in the land, Justice Marshall established a record for supporting the voiceless American. Having honed his skills since the case against the University of Maryland, he developed a profound sensitivity to injustice by way of the crucible of racial discrimination in this country. As an Associate Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall leaves a legacy that expands that early sensitivity to include all of America’s voiceless. Justice Marshall died on January 24, 1993.
Birth Date: July 2, 1908, Baltimore, Maryland
Death Date: January 24, 1993, Bethesda, Maryland
Lawyer, civil rights activist, and associate justice
