Alice Paul was born to wealthy Quaker parents who believed in gender equality, education for girls and women, and working to better society. As a young girl she accompanied her mother to woman…

Julia Ward Howe was a poet, author, composer, abolitionist, suffragist and more—but she is most remembered for writing the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Born in New York City in 1819,…

Born into wealth in Memphis—her father, Robert Church, was the South’s first black millionaire—Mary Church had earned two degrees from Oberlin by 1888. She moved to Washington to teach at the M Street…

When Katharine Meyer’s father, retired banker Eugene Meyer, bought the Washington Post out of bankruptcy in 1933, her future was sealed. While still in college, she worked at the paper during summers,…

Born into slavery in Virginia, Elizabeth Hobbs learned to sew from her mother. She became so skilled that her owners hired her out to other families, pocketing the money she earned. By 1855 she’d…

Josephine Butler was born in 1920 to parents who were sharecroppers on a tobacco farm in the Brandywine area of Prince George’s County, Maryland. At age 14 she moved to D.C., lied about her age, and…

Florida Avenue was Washington City’s northern boundary until 1871, and the area beyond it was mostly rural until the last decade of the 19th century. Development began shortly after the arrival of a…

After the 1885 death of Emily Beale, owner of an estate named Bloomingdale, her children subdivided it and began building on some lots and selling off others. The rowhouses at 1700-1712 First Street,…

In 1924, a government clerk named Sereno Ivy attempted to buy this house. However, the developers Middaugh & Shannon had included a racial covenant in the property’s original 1902 deed. Despite the…

In the late 1920s, young Edward Brooke moved with his family to 1730 First Street, on the west (African American) side of the First Street racial barrier. He graduated from Dunbar High School in 1936,…