Born on Nantucket to Cape Verdean parents, David DeLuze moved to Hingham in 1942 to seek employment at the Hingham Shipyard, where he was placed on the waitlist. He found work in New Hampshire until he was finally offered a job at the Shipyard in 1943. Mr. DeLuze worked first as an oiler and then became the Shipyard’s first Black crane operator. Up until World War II, the racially segregated Navy limited Black sailors to the role of mess attendants, but the demands of the war forced the Navy to begin training them for other jobs, often involving dangerous tasks with ammunition. Read more

On May 11, 1944, the USS YF-415, from the Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot, sank 14 miles off Nahant with a crew of 30 men while performing a routine dump of obsolete ammunition. 11 of the 17 crew members who were lost were Black sailors. Today the ship sits 240 feet below sea level. View the video of the October 2004 memorial service.

The Hingham Fourth of July parade was led by a Black band and two military units. Many musicians who would continue on to become famous Jazz musicians were stationed or stopped over in Hingham and were part of the Hingham Depot Ammunition Band during the war including John Coltrane (in 1945), Al Grey, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Tommy Ridgely.

Mabel Diggs was a Hingham resident active in a myriad of initiatives both in Hingham and beyond. She was a Board of Trustees member of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, the chair of the music and program committee of the Massachusetts State Union of Women's Clubs and the President of the Professional Dressmakers and Designers Guild. She was a significant fundraiser for the restoration of the Frederick Douglass home.

Hingham hires its first Black police officer, Louis T. Bonitto, son of Shirley (Tuttle) Bonitto and Louis L. Bonitto. Prior to this, Mr. Bonitto was a US Army drill instructor and afterwards, he became one of the South Shore's first Black realtors as well as one of IBM's first Black account executives. Click here to watch Joe Collymore of Harbor Media's 2021 interview with Louis T. Bonitto.

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In the wake of national events of 1963, including the murder of Medgar Evars and the March on Washington,the Hingham Chapter of the Massachusetts Freedom Movement was formed. This group spearheaded efforts such as the "Good Neighbor Pledge" (pictured).

Mary DeLuze Fernandes, daughter of David DeLuze (first crane operator at the Bethlehem-Hingham Shipyard) follows in her father’s trailblazing footsteps as one of the first (possibly the first!) Black women at Proctor and Gamble in Quincy during her summer job.

Hingham citizens, including members of the South Shore Citizens Club, travel to Boston to join a march led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and to listen to him speak on the Boston Common.