In an interview with the Washington Post in 1990, longtime Ward 1 Councilmember David A. Clarke (1943-1997) described the lasting impact of his childhood discovery that as a DC resident he could not become a Congressional page since there was no member of Congress from DC to sponsor him. "It was that day," in the mid-1950s, "that I dedicated myself to home rule for the District," said Clarke. He would go on to work for Rev. Walter Fauntroy (later DC's nonvoting delegate to Congress) and to enroll at Howard University Law School, where he was mentored by civil rights activist Franklin D. Reeves.

Over the next few years, Clarke also worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, organized lawyers for the 1968 Poor People's Campaign, and, beginning in 1971, headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's DC bureau.

When the District finally achieved the right to self-government in 1974, Clarke became one of just two white candidates to win seats on the Council. He represented Ward 1 (Mount Pleasant, Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, and the Howard University area) for the next seven years, becoming Council chair in 1983. Clarke's home in Mount Pleasant doubled as headquarters for most of Clarke's campaigns.

During his tenure on the DC Council, Clarke focused largely on issues of racial justice. One of the most urgent issues that the newly elected Council faced when it first convened in January 1975 was the accelerating pace of evictions by landlords looking to cash in on DC's hot housing market. With black residents most at-risk of losing their homes, the preservation of affordable housing was a central civil rights issue in DC. Clarke joined Ward 6 representative Nadine Winter in prioritizing anti-displacement legislation, including rent control, restrictions on conversions of rental units to condominiums, and an "anti-speculation tax" designed to limit the profits investors could reap by purchasing and reselling houses. In 1980, Clarke helped put in place DC's Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), which gives tenants the right of first refusal to purchase their buildings at the time of sale.

Clarke also focused his attention on an alarming trend in policing during his early years on the Council, specifically a 900 percent rise in arrests for marijuana possession over the course of seven years. Clarke framed decriminalization as a racial justice issue, based on the disproportionate targeting of black citizens for minor infractions. Despite these efforts, Clarke was not able to overcome opposition by religious leaders who saw marijuana as a dangerous "gateway" drug to which black Washingtonians were especially vulnerable.

In 1986, Clarke led the University of the District of Columbia's takeover of the social justice-oriented Antioch School of Law, which was at risk of closing. Renamed for Clarke in 1998, UDC's law school remains committed to advancing justice for those most in need and to providing legal education that is affordable and hands-on.

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In 1874, as DC's African American population and political clout grew during Reconstruction (1865-1877), Congress stripped DC residents of the ability to elect their own mayor and city council, denying them the right of self-governance. For the 100-year period between 1874 and 1974 when DC regained home rule, three presidentially appointed commissioners governed the city, overseen by Congressional committees charged with managing DC's affairs and budget. 

In the early 1970s, John A. Wilson (1943-1993) a civil rights activist in the 1960s, emerged as a leader in DC's successful home rule campaign; he represented Ward 2 on the City Council for 16 years, and chaired the Council in 1991-93. Wilson and many of his city government colleagues, including Marion Barry, worked as organizers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s. From 1969-1975, he ran the DC office of the National Sharecroppers Fund, which helped purchase property for the benefit of black farmers who were otherwise beholden to white landowners.

The Wilson Building has seen numerous home rule and civil rights demonstrations. For example, on June 14, 1963, Bishop Smallwood Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led a prayer there for 3,000 protesters who had gathered for a march led by activist Julius Hobson. As reported by The Washington Post, Williams prayed for the “impaired vision” of Congress, “for the opening of their eyes to the denial of voting rights, adequate educational opportunities, fair employment and equal protection under the law of all citizens.”

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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 operations for meetings and other events as she helped organize workers in the Pullman Car Company into a union. In the years before the union was officially recognized, she explained, meetings had to be held in secret, so she would close all her shades to prevent Pullman personnel from spying.

On behalf of her husband and thousands of other black men and women who worked as porters, attendants, and maids in sleeper cars, Tucker spent much of her adult life advocating for fair treatment and wages. "Organized labor was new to us," recalled Tucker, and the company frequently retaliated by transferring or firing porters suspected of union involvement. Tucker traveled to the homes of some 300 porters across the District, encouraging them to join the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, collecting union dues, and to "see that the men got knowledge of the progress" the union was making on their behalf.

Largely as the result of Tucker's and other women's efforts to swell the organization's ranks, the Pullman Company eventually signed a contract with the Brotherhood in 1937. Tucker became the national secretary and treasurer of the Brotherhood's Ladies Auxiliary, and served as a liaison between the union's local branch and the Brotherhood's president, A. Philip Randolph who was headquartered in Harlem, as well as with the Auxiliary's president, Helena Carter in Chicago.

Locally, Tucker was a frequent speaker at meetings of the DC Voters League, where she shared the podium with Nannie Helen Burroughs in 1939. She also fought for black access to decent schools before legal desegregation in 1954; testified before Congressional committees that controlled labor and day care laws in the District; and helped organize unions for laundry and domestic workers.

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Freeman conceived of the New School of Afro-American Thought as a much-need institution for educating and empowering Black residents through a wide array of Afro-centric offerings. As he later explained, some had begun to see Howard University as failing "to accept its responsibility to do anything other than produce people for jobs." The New School was established to fill that gap. The project grew out of the Cardozo Area Art Committee which sponsored public exhibitions, and its March 1966 festival “Three Days of Soul,” which brought a variety of musicians, dancers, poets and other Black performance artists to DC for a festival celebrating black culture.

In a poor neighborhood that Freeman described as having "too many liquor stores," the New School transformed the former auto repair shop at 2208 14th Street NW into "a factory for Black minds," offering free classes in writing, drama, poetry, history, drumming, dance, Swahili, photography, data processing, and political thought, among other subjects. It brought in well-known speakers and encouraged members of the community, especially underserved neighborhood residents, to plan and participate in events. It also served as a free facility for political and community organizing, hosting the first meeting of DC's Black United Front in January 1968. Organized by Stokely Carmichael, the meeting attracted a standing-room-only crowd of around 100 local leaders.

Because DC was a mecca for Black political organizing and regularly attracted leaders from across the country, the New School became a seed for similar institutions in other cities. Although the school had closed by the spring of 1971, its impact continued to be felt through the spread of Afro-centric education and by Washingtonians who attended the school during its active years. After the school closed, the building fell into disrepair and stood boarded up and abandoned until it was renovated in recent years.

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Founded in 1935 by Mary McLeod Bethune as a national voice for Black women's organizations, NCNW signed onto the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s, under the leadership of Dorothy Height from Mississippi. As a woman, Height was excluded as a speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, propelling NCNW to organize its own initiative to support the work of voting rights activists in Mississippi. This work evolved into securing 1960s-era War on Poverty funds for Black women in Mississippi and funding community organizing in more than a dozen states.

In the 1970s, inspired by the Black Power Movement, NCNW changed its slogan from “Faith, Leadership, Culture” to “Commitment, Unity, and Self-Reliance.”

NCNW's reputation among white politicians and funders as a moderate, gradualist organization helped secure funding for additional black power projects in the Mississippi Delta. Dorothy Height "could handle the bureaucrats in the fashion that she needed to handle them, in order to win the day for the cause," proclaimed Owen Brooks, who headed Delta Ministry, a grassroots anti-poverty group in Mississippi.

From 1943 until 1966, the NCNW headquarters and the private residence of its founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, was located at 1318 Vermont Avenue. The organization later moved to 1346 Connecticut Avenue in Dupont Circle before establishing its headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1995 where it remains today.

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(Belford Lawson, 1947)

Washington attorney Belford V. Lawson (1909-1985) spoke these words at a 1947 forum at Lincoln University that followed the release of a much-anticipated report by the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. He urged Lincoln students to study the report’s recommendations for eliminating segregation and to enter into a career of public service. Lawson had embarked on his own career in civil rights years earlier. He co-founded the Negro Alliance in the early 1930's and served as lead attorney for New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery, the 1938 Supreme Court case that upheld the right to boycott and picket businesses. In 1941 he filed a case regarding discrimination in the cafeteria of the new National Airport in what the New York Amsterdam Star-News called the first D.C. civil rights case since 1868. According to the court decision, the airport food concessionaire was allowed to continue its discriminatory practices since federal facilities could follow local laws, and National Airport was located in Virginia where segregation was legal. Despite additional lawsuits, the airport food concessionaire continued to discriminate until 1949.

In 1950 Lawson was part of the legal team for Henderson v. United States, a landmark lawsuit that abolished segregation in railroad dining cars. In 1948, with Lawson as its national president, Alpha Phi Alpha and several other African American Greek-letter organizations formed the American Council on Human Rights to press for housing, civil rights legislation, and fair employment practices by government agencies. The group’s conventions drew thousands.

Marjorie M. Lawson (1912-2002), Belford Lawson’s wife and also an attorney, served as general counsel for the National Council of Negro Women and as an adviser to John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign. President Kennedy appointed her to the Juvenile Court bench in 1962, and President Johnson appointed her U.S. representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in 1965. The couple lived on Logan Circle from 1938 to 1958 and rented their third floor to U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (D-NY, 1945-1971). In the 1960s, Powell would serve a vital role in shepherding President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s civil rights legislation through Congress.

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Later that month the group received its charter as Post 5 of the DC Department of the American Legion and named itself for renowned musician, composer, and band leader James Reese Europe (1881-1919), who grew up in Washington. During World War I, Lt. Europe served in France with the 369th Infantry—aka the Harlem Hellfighters—and organized that unit’s celebrated band, introducing early syncopated American Jazz to French audiences. About the time the American Legion was forming, Lt. Europe died in New York from injuries inflicted in an assault by a disgruntled band member. 

Along with serving as a gathering place and service provider for veterans, the Post has spoken out on various civil rights issues. For example, it joined a nationwide campaign against police brutality by adopting a resolution condemning the 1938 DC police shooting of an unarmed, shell-shocked veteran. It also petitioned the US Congress to find a suitable venue for Marian Anderson to perform in 1939; demanded the abolition of the poll tax in 1942; demanded an end to the mistreatment by the U.S. military of African American servicemen in 1943; and, that same year, demanded that the DC Department of the American Legion remove the discrimination clause from its articles of incorporation.

Post 5 bought its headquarters, the rowhouse at 2027 North Capitol Street NE, in 1954 where it remains active today.

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The Drum and Spear Bookstore, which operated from 1968 to 1974, specialized in books by and about Black people. The bookstore, founded by Charlie Cobb, Courtland Cox, Judy Richardson and Curtis Hayes (later Curtis Muhammed)--all veterans of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee--and Tony Gittens who became its first manager, was a literary oasis steeped in the Black Power and Black Consciousness movements. It served as a local, national and international resource for reliable information about the African American and African world at a time when such information was not widely available.

Drum and Spear quickly developed into a combination bookstore, library, community and education center, arts and crafts outlet, and literary haven, where writers held readings and people of all walks of life and all political persuasions met and exchanged ideas. For a time, Drum and Spear was the largest bookstore of its kind in the United States. It inspired the establishment of black bookstores around the country. It also inspired special surveillance by the FBI, which considered black bookstores to be subversive organizations.

An ancillary business, Drum and Spear Press, at 1802 Belmont Road in Adams Morgan, released its first title in 1969: A History of Pan-African Revolt, by C.L.R. James. The Trinidadian-born historian, author, and political activist had joined the faculty of the University of the District of Columbia in 1968. Other releases included Eloise Greenfield's children’s series, the first of which was Bubbles. Some of the bookstore founders also helped open the Center for Black Education, one block west at 1435-1437 Fairmont Street, as an alternative to Federal City College, DC’s new land grant school. The Center embraced a Pan-Africanist philosophy and required its students to do likewise. Through the 1970s it taught a variety of courses, including welding, food science, civil engineering, and politics.

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Oscar Stanton De Priest (1871-1951) represented Chicago’s South Side in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1929 to 1935. He was the first African American Congressman in the 20th century and the first in 28 years. He was also the first-ever Black Congressman from the North, and the first in what would be an unbroken line of African American representation of Illinois’s 1st Congressional District. (Rep. Harold Washington held the seat from 1981 to 1983 when he resigned to become Chicago’s mayor, and Rep. Bobby Rush, the incumbent in 2018, first won the seat in 1993.)

As the only African American Congressman during his tenure, De Priest symbolically represented all African Americans—and, as the son of freedmen, he embodied hope and the possibility of change. De Priest was an outspoken critic of segregation and introduced several anti-discrimination bills: to reduce the number of House seats for states that disenfranchised African Americans; to provide pensions for elderly former slaves; and to hold states responsible for preventing lynching, among others. Most of his proposals failed to pass, but in 1933 he succeeded in attaching an anti-discrimination amendment to the law that established the Civilian Conservation Corps, a government program that helped relieve the widespread unemployment of the Great Depression. Locally, he increased Howard University’s federal funding.

A Republican, De Priest opposed many of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal relief programs, and that stance cost him his seat in the election of 1934. A Black Democrat, Arthur Mitchell, took his place in 1935. De Priest and his wife Jessie De Priest lived at 419 U Street NW during their six years in Washington.

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This manifesto, proclaimed at a March 1969 news conference, announced the formation of the DC Statehood Party Committee. With a multiracial membership that included Rev. Doug Moore of the Black United Front, Rev. Jesse Anderson of St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, and Washington Afro-American editor Chuck Stone, the committee saw advocating statehood as a means for advancing civil rights and black power in a majority-black city controlled by the US Congress. (DC is a federal district that lacks voting representation in Congress to this day.)

A year later, the white DC activist and journalist Sam Smith published an article arguing that statehood was the clearest path toward putting a stop to the "endless quibbling over colonial reorganization" that plagued DC politics. He urged DC residents to embrace statehood as a "clear, just and attainable" means of self-determination.

Julius Hobson—a former leader of the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), the successful plaintiff in a 1967 legal case charging the DC public schools with racial discrimination, and a member of DC's first elected school board—helped launch the DC Statehood Party in 1970 by running as the party's candidate to become DC's first non-voting delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives. Although he lost to Rev. Walter Fauntroy, Hobson garnered enough votes to make the party official, and in 1974, was elected to the first home rule Council as the Statehood Party’s candidate. Following Hobson's death in 1977, Hilda Mason was appointed to his seat; she continued to serve as the party’s representative on the Council until 1998. Josephine Butler, a former labor organizer and public health activist, chaired the party beginning in 1977 and continued to advocate for statehood until her death in 1997.

The Statehood Party headquarters were located in the pre-Civil War building at 1017 K Street NW, recently renovated and part of the Moxy Hotel.

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