The Wah Luck House was built in 1982, making it one of the oldest affordable housing complexes in Chinatown. It is home to the most densely concentrated group of Chinese residents in DC. The Wah Luck House also serves as a central meeting place for…

Up until the early twentieth century, the Brightwood area was mostly rural. In the 1820s, Brightwood contained important transportation routes until the road network changed during the Civil War for a line of defensive fortifications. Eventually,…

Emerald Street NE, or Emerson Street prior to 1950, is a one-block-long "minor" residential street located between 13th and 14th and E and F Streets NE at the center of Square 1029 in east Capitol Hill. The street is lined with several intact and…

The James and Mary Hurd house at 116 Bryant Street in Bloomingdale was at the center of the Supreme Court's landmark 1948 decision ending court enforcement of racially restrictive real estate covenants. The case, Hurd v. Hodge, was DC's companion to…

As the highest court of the land, the United States Supreme Court is ultimately where significant, nationwide civil rights advances are made, and sometimes unmade. While Congress has a huge role, too, in advancing (or taking away) civil rights, it…

Built in the 1920s to serve white residents of Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant, St. Stephen and the Incarnation Episcopal Church in 1957 became the first church of the Washington Episcopal Diocese to integrate its congregation. The St. Stephen's…

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 advance African American civil rights. The group…

Morgan School, which stood at 18th and California streets until 1977 (now occupied by the soccer field at Marie Reed Recreation Center), stood as a symbol of the success that this mostly Black community achieved in its fight to manage its own…

In the same year that President Lyndon B. Johnson asked him to serve as the first African American Supreme Court Justice, US Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall used these words in defense of the federal government's opposition to a California state…

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 May 1942, Henderson was denied seating on a…