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Home > My Ancestors >
African American > Timeline:
1950-present
- 1950: Postwar migration increases the black population of Boston
to more than 40,000. Most of the newcomers are from the South and
they settle in the existing black neighborhoods. Spanish speaking
African Americans also begin to arrive in the 1950s; they initially
settle in the South End.
- 1951:
September, Martin Luther
King, Jr. arrives at Boston University to study for his Ph.D.
While in Boston, King would meet Coretta Scott who, like King, was
a southerner attending a Boston school.
- 1967: Thomas Atkins becomes the first black person elected to
the city council at-large.
- 1968: April, Black community organizers in the South End erect
"Tent City" in protest of the urban renewal program that left many
people without affordable housing in their own neighborhood.
- 1970: Boston's black population reaches 104,000.
- 1973: Roxbury Community College is founded after Boston's black
community pressures the state.
- 1974: The offices of the NAACP on Massachusetts Ave. in Boston
are firebombed in protest to the busing of children to integrate schools.
- 1975: Bill Owens becomes first black State Senator.
- 1985:
Black
Bostonians vote on a referendum to secede from Boston to form their
own city, with Roxbury and Dorchester as its principal parts. The
city would be called Mandela. It is voted down.
- 1988: Roxbury Community College opens at its current location
in its first permanent building. It is the only predominantly black
college in New England.
See 1850-1949
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