John Anderson Lankford (1874-1946) broke barriers when he put his stamp on Washington’s built environment begining in the early 20th century. At the same time, he promoted racial progress through…

“…[A]ll education should be in the direction of overcoming the awful monsters of Jim Crow and other evils that stand in the way of freedom.”(Belford Lawson, 1947)

Since the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922, the larger-than-life-size, seated statue of the “Great Emancipator” has witnessed many milestones in the fight for civil rights. The dedication…

In 1939, Lincoln Temple Congregational Church was the site of a mass meeting to "Abolish Modern Slavery," hosted by the National Negro Congress (NNC). With a goal of focusing attention on police…

"Democracy, hell! There is no democracy if a citizen can be restrained from living in property simply on the basis of her color. " (Judge James A. Cobb, Baltimore Afro-American, June 9, 1945)

In 1895, Kelly Miller, a prominent intellectual, author and faculty member at Howard University, convinced the university to add to its curriculum the new discipline of sociology. Sociologists, Miller…

In 1952, Louise Burrell Miller and others sued the DC Board of Education to have deaf African American children educated within the District and won. Schools in DC were segregated by law, including…

As assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, Daniel Alexander Payne Murray (1852-1925), created the authors and literature exhibit for W.E.B. Du Bois’s seminal exhibition on African Americans at…

The National Council of Negro Women's relocation of its headquarters in 1995 to Pennsylvania Avenue was fitting for a group that has been so enormously influential in advancing the economic well-being…

“The National Theatre of Washington has the bold affront to bring to the District of Columbia a show, ‘The Green Pastures,’ played entirely by a cast of our own people, with the definite understanding…