Elmer W. Henderson was the plaintiff in a major civil rights case, a fair employment advocate for the federal government, and the longtime director of a national lobby for African American equality.…

Ruth Bates Harris (1919-2004) is most remembered for blowing the whistle on NASA’s discriminatory hiring practices in the early 1970s. NASA hired her as an equal opportunity officer in 1971, but two…

"If I'm criticized, then I've been heard." (Willie J. Hardy)

On her way to becoming a nationally renowned public health and civil rights activist in the 1940s, Dorothy Boulding Ferebee (1898-1980) moved to DC in 1925 for an internship at Howard University's…

Originally the headquarters of the Securities and Exchange Commission, this 1949 building at 425 2nd Street NW became home to the nation's first urban land grant school when Federal City College (FCC)…

For 60 years spanning much of the second half of the 20th century, New Bethel Baptist Church at 1739 9th Street was led by Rev. Walter Fauntroy, one of DC's most respected civil rights leaders. A…

"Believing…that everyone has a right to good and decent housing, a right of choice to live where one can afford to buy and desires to live—our firm dedicated itself to finding such homes….We knocked…

The US Department of Justice (DOJ), headquartered in a building designed for it as part of the Federal Triangle project in the 1930s, has been an essential tool in advancing African American civil…

In February 1944 former National Negro Congress leader John P. Davis attempted to enroll his five-year-old son Michael at Noyes Elementary School in his Brookland neighborhood and was turned away.…

In the late 1940s, Barry Farm/Hillsdale native Thelma Dale (later Perkins) quit her government job to become national secretary of the National Negro Congress (NNC) in New York. As a Howard University…