The Victorian rowhouse at 817 Q Street NW was, for more than three decades between 1943 and 1978, the local chapter office of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP). Socialist…

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.…

In its first fifty years since it was professionalized in the 1870s, the DC Fire Department had employed a few Black firefighters, but none had ever achieved officer status until three African…

After receiving a master's in African Studies at Howard University, helping to raise three nieces in her Kalorama home, and working two jobs to put her husband through medical school, Jewell Mazique…

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…

Marie Richardson (1920-1987) became a labor and civil rights activist in the 1930s, while a student at Cardozo High School. Her father handled baggage at Union Station, and together they helped…

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…