In early 1950, Mary Church Terrell and other activists attempted to eat at Thompson’s Restaurant, a downtown cafeteria and one of many restaurants and eateries with a whites-only policy. The group was…

“If democracy is to live, segregation must die.” (Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, 1956)

"If I'm criticized, then I've been heard." (Willie J. Hardy)

The corner of 14th and U was the grapevine. . . . If you were at that corner, you always had the sense that something big was about to happen.

The distinctive stone building at the apex of Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol Street was designed and built as a Childs Restaurant in 1925 to attract visitors—white visitors, that is—as they…

“I would prefer to sell to the colored man because he has a so much harder time getting a house.”

As summer began in 1949, African American residents of far Northeast and Southeast looked forward to finally having access to a swimming pool on their side of the Anacostia River.

“They are tax payers, they are citizens, and they have a right to play golf on public courses on the same basis as whites. To be sure, we have maintained a golf course for Negroes in Washington, but…

In the late 1940s, Park View Playground—an all-white facility in an increasingly Black neighborhood—was one of a few playgrounds selected by the Board of Recreation for racial integration. This…

The Pigskin Club was founded by Dr. Charles B. Fisher on July 30, 1938, as a social organization of men who had participated in or contributed to collegiate football. A similar club, the Touchdown…