Ozeline Wise

Ozeline Pearson Wise (1903  – 1988) was the first black woman to be employed in the banking department of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a position she held for 20 years.[1][2] She and her sister Satyra Bennett co-founded the Citizens Charitable Health Association and the Cambridge Community Center.[3]

Ozeline Wise
Wise in 1978
Born1903
Worcester, Massachusetts
Died1988
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Wise took the civil service exam but was denied a job with the post office because of her gender. She later took a job at the banking department of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the early 1950s.[4]

Personal life

Wise grew up in Michigan and Massachusetts. Her parents were Frances Lavina (Gale) and William B. Pearson, her grandfather Josiah Pearson had been an enslaved person in Jamaica.[5] She graduated from high school in Cambridge, Mass. She married John Wise in 1931 and they adopted a son, Hubert Smith, in 1961.[5] They lived in Billerica, Massachusetts in a house named Galehurst, which they ran as an inn that was listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book.[6][5] Wise died in 1988 and left her papers, as well as those of her sister and her father, to the Schlesinger Library.

References
  1. "Cambridge Women's Heritage Project Database, W". City of Cambridge, MA. 2001-03-25. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  2. "Ozeline_Wise". Flickr account of Schlesinger Library. 2019-01-29. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  3. "Research Guides Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America". Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard University. Retrieved 29 January 2019.
  4. The Black Women Oral History Project: Cplt.: Hill, Ruth Edmonds: The Black Women Oral History Project. Cplt. Berlin: De Gruyter. 1991. pp. 309–320. ISBN 3-11-097391-X. OCLC 881295859.
  5. "Collection: Papers of Ozeline Wise, 1854-1988". HOLLIS for Archival Discovery. 2019-01-29. Retrieved 2019-01-29.
  6. Green, Victor (Spring 1956). Negro Motorist Green Book. p. 74. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
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