Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) worked tirelessly for the economic advancement of African Americans, and especially for the empowerment of black women and youth. Her "combination of deference,…

In 1938, the National Non-partisan Council on Public Affairs (NPC), an outgrowth of the Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) sorority, became the first organization devoted to lobbying the federal government to…

Pride was here. Keep it!

In a 1982 interview with a Washington Post reporter when she was 100 years old, longtime labor activist Rosina Corrothers Tucker recalled how her house at 1128 7th Street had been the center of…

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…

"They say we have outside agitators . . . . Heck, when you're living like this, you don’t need anybody from outside to agitate [for] you." (The Washington Post, December 25, 1966).

Church of God's modest appearance and location along a busy commercial corridor belie the grandiose dreams and significant accomplisments of its founder, Elder Solomon Lightfoot Michaux.

During the 1960s, the once-elegant apartment complex originally known as Wardman Courts, but renamed Clifton Terrace in 1921, had fallen into severe disrepair. As tenants were forced to endure a lack…

"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…

As African American families began fleeing the South during the Great Migration, they discovered in Washington great opportunities in education and employment. However, finding capital to buy a home…