Ozeline Wise

Ozeline Pearson Wise (1903  – 1988) was the first African-American 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

Ozeline was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her parents were Frances Lavina Gale (1868-1948) and William B. Pearson (1868-1919) both born in Jamaica. Her grandfather Josiah Pearson had been an enslaved person in Jamaica.[5] According to the Cambridge City Directories, in the early 1900s, Reverend William B. Pearson and his family moved to serve as the pastor of the St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church She graduated from high school in Cambridge, Mass. She married John Wise in 1931 and they adopted a son, Hubert Barrett Wise, in the 1940s.[5] According to the Greater Lowell City Directories about 1942, Ozeline and John Wise opened an inn, Galehurst Guest House, 239 Concord Road, Billerica which was owned and operated for nearly 30 years. In the Greater Lowell area, the Galehurst Guest House was the only tourist facility recommended for African American travelers 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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