“… heavy, heavy is the load That bends my body to the road.” (Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Ordeal)

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…

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…

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…

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,…