The Audacious Woman Who Launched the Nation’s First Black Monthly Magazine
Pauline Hopkins never quelled her #BlackGirlMagic for anyone
When I search for 5 Park Square on Google Maps as I meander around downtown Boston, it tells me the address doesn’t exist. Or rather, it persistently redirects me to 50 Park Square, the address of the palatial (and expensive) Boston Park Plaza Hotel. It’s a stone’s throw from the bustle of the Theater District and the Boston Common, magnets for wealthy socialites, disenchanted locals, and curious tourists.
Though Boston’s Black Heritage Trail winds through this portion of the city, 5 Park Square is woefully unmarked, interred in the depths of hotel and restaurant developments. There’s absolutely nothing to indicate the presence of what I’m looking for: the building that housed the nation’s first monthly magazine for Black Americans.
Before Jet and Ebony, there was the Colored American Magazine.
From 1900 to 1909, subscribers to the magazine received a monthly illustrated mélange of reported features, fiction, and updates on Black businesses and organizers across the country. For the time the magazine was based in Boston, Pauline Hopkins was an integral and influential part of it. Through her involvement and subsequent editorship of the Colored…
