“I would prefer to sell to the colored man because he has a so much harder time getting a house.”

In 1942, the rowhouse at 2530 13th Street was at the center of a successful legal battle to open this section of Columbia Heights to Black residence.

Ask older Black Washingtonians about Hecht's and they may recount that their mothers weren’t allowed to try on clothes, or that only white customers could dine at the store's basement lunch counter. 

Attorney and politician Wilhelmina Jackson Rolark (1916–2006) and publisher and executive Calvin Rolark (1927–1994) were activists and outspoken advocates for DC. Their legacy is carried on by the…

Murray Brothers Printing Company opened in 1907, at the height of an era when Black businesses proliferated in DC. In 1920, the Murrays built this building at 918-922 U Street, moving their business…

Howard Croft (1941-2020) is remembered as a fierce crusader for social justice and DC Statehood.

For 40 years, the three-story building at 1900 15th Street NW housed B & D Barber Shop on the ground floor. The business was owned by Gardner LaClede Bishop (1909–1992), a leader in the mid-20th…

The distinctive stone building at the apex of Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol Street was designed and built as a Childs Restaurant in 1925 to attract visitors—white visitors, that is—as they…

Walter Washington (1915-2003) became the first African American mayor of a major American city, and the first mayor in DC since 1871 when President Lyndon Johnson appointed him to the position in…

The James and Mary Hurd house at 116 Bryant Street in Bloomingdale was at the center of the Supreme Court's landmark 1948 decision ending court enforcement of racially restrictive real estate…