Education

As one of Boston's most influential leaders, William Cooper Nell served the community as an organizer, abolitionist, and historian.

While the African American community of Boston had first supported educating their children within a Black school, they soon saw the significant discrepancies due to segregated education. In response to this inequality, community members launched a campaign to integrate schools. Sarah Roberts v. City of Boston played a significant role in this movement, as Benjamin Roberts filed a suit against the Boston Primary School Committee on behalf of his daughter.

Many Americans believe education can promote equality, inspire citizenship, and impart a lasting good for society. On the surface, Boston has exemplified this tradition: Puritan settlers established Boston Latin School in 1635 and Harvard College in 1636. However, the question of access to quality education complicates early 19th century education. Though no law or policy in Boston explicitly barred children of color from attending school, impacting Black Bostonians education

In the Reconstruction period following the Civil War, newly freed African Americans faced monumental challenges to establish their own households, farm their own lands, establish community institutions and churches, and to pursue equal justice under the law in a period of racist violence. A new NPS report presents the story of the extraordinary accomplishments of rural African Americans in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia.

Charlotte Williams Foster Myers, an Afro-Indigenous woman, taught at Boston Primary School No. 5, one of the segregated public schools for African American children in Beacon Hill.

A Black printer and writer for Boston area newspapers, Benjamin Franklin Roberts served as a leader for his community. He printed the "Caution Colored People of Boston" in response to the Fugitive Slave Law, and he advocated for equal schooling for his and other Black children in Boston.

Learn about the contributions of Storer College students and alumni in World War I. Storer College was founded in 1867 and was the first institution of higher learning for African Americans in West Virginia. Over 100 students and alumni of the school enlisted and contributed to the United States' efforts during the Great War.

After teaching for a short time at the Tuskegee Institute, Dr. J. Earnest Wilkins, Jr returned to the University of Chicago to work on the Manhattan Project in the Metallurgical Laboratory from 1944-1946.