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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

"Liberty is not the loser when the pressures of conformity to prejudice are removed by law." (Thurgood Marshall, Solicitor General of the United States, March 1967)

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.…

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

For 60 years spanning much of the second half of the 20th century, New Bethel Baptist Church at 1739 9th Street was led by Rev. Walter Fauntroy, one of DC's most respected civil rights leaders. A…

"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…