"Believing…that everyone has a right to good and decent housing, a right of choice to live where one can afford to buy and desires to live—our firm dedicated itself to finding such homes….We knocked…

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.

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…

“The National Theatre of Washington has the bold affront to bring to the District of Columbia a show, ‘The Green Pastures,’ played entirely by a cast of our own people, with the definite understanding…

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…

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…

“George E.C. Hayes was one of the great lawyers who fought for the little people of this Nation when it was extremely unpopular to do so.” (Wiley Branton, Director of the United Planning Organization,…

“That was the whole point of the store…to have a space where Black people, whatever their political persuasions were, or maybe they didn’t have any political persuasions…could encounter ideas, could…

“Hardly anything of significance to Washington – and most particularly to black Washington – came to fruition without Billy Simpson’s significant – albeit non-public – role in it.”

Following the merger of two banks, this building operated as the headquarters for the new Federal-American National Bank. The bank building was designed by architect Alfred C. Bossom (1881-1965), in…